2D barcodes have been around for a while. In fact, it’s more than 20 years and I mentioned this ‘new’ technology on this blog in 2006. Mind boggling. But some things take their time and it has taken 20 years for the technology to be deployed to get paperless receipts at the bakery. No, I’m not kidding.
Earlier this year, I noticed on some of my rare ‘physical’ shopping sprees in Cologne, Germany, that quite a number of shops, and even the pharmacy around the corner are now presenting a bar code after payment to get a digital receipt instead of a paper receipt. In some of these shops, you have to ask to actually get the paper receipt. Digital has become the first option. But I guess not too many people take the receipt anyway, paper or paperless.
So how does it work? There are at least two variants: For both, you start the camera in your smartphone and point it towards the 2D barcode shown at the cash register and follow the link. Following that, either the receipt is shown as PDF straight away, or you have to provide an email address to which the receipt is sent. I’m a bit skeptical about the second option from a standpoint of privacy.
Admittedly, for the bakery and pharmacy, the feature is not very useful to me, I don’t need a receipt. But for buying tax relevant things such as computer magazines, etc., I quite like the feature, as it saves me the time to scan and archive the receipt for later use.
Yes, so maybe all nice and well and perhaps not even worth mentioning. What I find really interesting is how long 2D barcodes have been around before they’ve started to be used for this particular purpose.