Transaction Tree enables retailers to provide electronic receipts to their customers.  They do this by collecting emails at the POS, combining them with the actual transaction data and enabling retailers to deliver customized emails with both the receipt data and relevant marketing.

Digital Receipt History

In 2000, NCR led creation of the Digital Receipt alliance.  Participating companies were Visa, Office Depot, America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.’s VeriFone division.  The alliance proposed a standard for digital receipts to the National Retail Federation’s technology standards body which now maintains this standard.

So, companies have been working in this space for nearly a decade.   There have been several attempts to approach this more from the consumer-side of the equation – attempting to create demand for a customer ‘receipt repository’ of sorts.   The latest entrant is Intuit QuickReceipts.  Transaction Tree has instead focused on providing technology which captures customer email and transaction data to facilitate emailing of the receipt along with relevant marketing messages.

What’s Changed

A few things are different now and may provide the catalyst for companies like Transaction Tree:

• A large company with significant resources (Intuit) is sponsoring the repository and working with retailers to gain critical mass.  Transaction Tree is partnering with Intuit to populate the database (as is Afterbot).
• Apple already offers email receipts and many customers are getting acclimated to the idea.
• Retailers and their customers are looking for ways to be more ‘green’.
• Retailers need to find new ways to reach customers on a one-to-one basis.  Leveraging receipt data to generate a more relevant offer to customers is one way to do this.

Risks

Collecting receipt information is not a difficult technical problem.    I know of at least one POS company that has an add-on module allowing for email receipts.   I believe Epicor announced something at NRF as well.  If retailers want it, POS companies will be forced to offer it.

The question is, will POS companies and retailers do this themselves as opposed to leveraging a company like Transaction Tree?  Perhaps, but the value to retailers is less in the data collection and more in how that data enables retailers to more effectively reach their customers.  This is not in the core skill set of most POS providers.

Their main competitors are AfterBot, Third Solutions and AllEtronic. Afterbot was the only other one I saw at NRF.

Is the time right for digital receipts?  I think you will see retailers increasingly making this option available to their customers.  Will Transaction Tree be a dominant player?  It’s too early to tell, but if they add value beyond simply email and transaction capture, then they have a shot.

Full Disclosure:  While I have no financial interest, I have informally advised Transaction Tree and have referred them to retailers looking for a solution like theirs.

Photo by Jorge Quinteros