The National Retail Federation's Association for Retail Technology Standards today announced the release of Version 2 of its Digital Receipts standard. Digital receipts have become a hot topic in the retail and payments industries as many consumers are using electronic receipts for seamless returns and exchanges as well as coupon redemption.
Version 2 presents substantial improvements to the schema, including a full alignment with the widely adopted retail transaction log standard, support for multiple recipients, delivery types and receipt formats, and introduction of a unique receipt identifier to address data integrity across multiple applications including mobile devices.
"Retailers love digital receipts because they are environmentally friendly and provide their shoppers with added convenience, especially since mobile devices now play such a large role in the shopping experience," said ARTS Executive Director Richard Mader. "We believe the release of Version 2 of the standard will accelerate the adoption of digital receipts in years to come."
"Our team goal in developing Version 2 was to meet the consumers' demand to have all of their receipts stored in one place and in the same format for easy access regardless of the issuing retailer or retail channel," said Birame Sock, CEO of Third Solutions and chair of the ARTS Digital Receipts committee. "Implementing Version 2 will enable all companies offering digital receipts applications to provide retailers, consumers and POS providers a complete solution for storing and accessing receipts for various purposes in a secured and private manner."
Several POS providers have already committed to supporting the standard and plan to make digital receipts available to their retail clients in upcoming versions of their POS software.
The ARTS Digital Receipt Committee was formed last year and involved a number of retail technology experts from various ARTS members, including Third Solutions, ViVOtech, CellPoint Mobile, Escalate Retail, Sasktel Labs, IBM, Lowe's, Verizon Business and Wincor-Nixdorf.
ARTS plans to continue its work on adapting its standards to new retail developments, including Digital Coupons and Mobile Payments and Social Commerce initiatives. Version 2 of the Digital Receipt XML Standard specification and related documents, including the opportunity to provide the committee with comments and suggestions for additional enhancements, can be downloaded free of charge on the ARTS website.
