Edeka Nord is the first retail company in Germany to offer its customers digital receipts without the need for the shoppers to identify themselves. Who stands behind the solution reveals the server site on which the receipt is provided: It is the cloud solution eMailBon from GK Software.
Earlier this month, the daily newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt reported enthusiastically that Edeka saves tons of paper finding a digital solution for the legal obligation to issue receipts. In fact, however, Edeka Group has been offering digital receipts for some time – as part of its Genuss Plus app.
What first caught the attention of our colleagues from Hamburger Abendblatt is a new solution that only Edeka Region Nord has been using so far. And this solution is indeed revolutionary, although other retail companies such as Lidl and Rewe have also long offered a digital receipt.
But unlike Lidl and Rewe, customers at Edeka Nord do not have to identify themselves to receive digital receipts. And this could be the breakthrough for avoiding costs and paper waste. Until now, digital receipts have been reserved for a limited circle of users who have registered, for example in apps. For all who wanted to shop anonymously, the receipt had to be printed.
Customers do not have to register
If a customer decides to receive a digital receipt in a sales outlet belonging to Edeka Nord, a QR code appears on the customer display next to the payment amount for 15 seconds. This can be scanned without an app using the smartphone camera. If customers scans the QR code, they are automatically taken to a server page with the digital receipt.
It is stored there for one day and can be downloaded as a pdf file and then saved according to the customer’s wishes. The URL also indicates which technological solution is involved: It is the cloud solution eMailBon from its POS software provider GK Software that Edeka Nord uses here.
Concerns that the procedure would delay the checkout process only apply to a very limited extent. According to observations of the Retail Optimiser in Hamburg, only very few customers actually scan the barcode. Their wish is often to simply not get a receipt at all. And that is fine, because the legal regulation does not oblige the customer to receive a receipt. It merely forces the retailer to provide a digital one if a printed one is not desired.
