Government app for a defunct service. e-Receipts were supposed to change the market
The Ministry of Finance boasts of the popularity of the e-Paragony application. It has already been downloaded by nearly 20,000 people. The problem is that zero e-Receipts have been issued so far.
“The e-Receipts application is a modern service that allows you to store all received receipts in one place – the customer’s phone. It is a safe, voluntary solution that ensures anonymity, and at the same time very useful,” we read in a statement from the Ministry of Finance, which boasts of the application’s great popularity. According to the latest data, nearly 20,000 people have already downloaded it. There is a very serious problem.
e-Receipts of horror
Even a representative of the Ministry of Finance draws attention to the key problem. In a statement quoted by the ministry, he points out that Poles would like to use e-Receipts. The problem is they can’t.
– This is a large number of people, considering that we are at the first stage of implementing this service. This is a clear signal to cash register manufacturers, sellers and service providers that Poles would be happy to use e-receipts and it is worth giving them this option as soon as possible. We have signals that customers are already asking in branches whether they can receive an electronic receipt on a smartphone. We hope that with each month there will be more and more such points – said Anna Chałupa, deputy minister of finance and deputy head of the National Audit Office, quoted in the release.
Lack of infrastructure for e-Receipts
To use e-Receipts, you need not only an application to receive and store them, but above all, cash registers that will be able to issue them. Well, here’s the problem.
As we read in the statement of the Ministry of Finance, “today you can add traditional receipts received manually in the store, and soon it will be possible to download them electronically more and more often”. The application is currently a tool for storing copies of printed receipts that citizens enter themselves.
However, the Ministry promises that this will change “soon” and it will be possible to receive e-Receipts “more and more often”. The problem is that neither the date nor the scale of the introduction of this service is known.
There are still no cash registers on the market that would be able to issue e-Receipts. For the latest devices to do this, an expensive software update is needed. In theory, the functionality could be supported by over a million state-of-the-art cash registers that are already in use in stores and service premises, but are not connected to the system. When will this change? This is not known.
