Why Does a Receipt Need My Email Address?

You buy something at a store. You pay for it. Then the screen asks for your email address so it can send you a receipt.

It’s a receipt. It needs to tell me what I bought and how much I paid. I’m not sure why it needs to know how to reach me.

I understand the appeal of a digital receipt. Paper receipts disappear. They fade. Some of them are long enough to include a short history of the store. If I’ve bought something expensive that I might need to return, an emailed copy could be useful.

But this request also appears after purchases that do not call for an archival system. A drink. A pack of batteries. Something you were holding thirty seconds ago and can still see.

Now you’re standing at the register typing your address into a little screen while somebody waits behind you. The keyboard is just small enough to make one wrong letter likely and just public enough to make you wonder whether everyone in line is watching you spell your own name.

And there are usually more decisions than a receipt ought to require. Email it? Print it? Both? Neither? A purchase has turned into a brief exit interview.

The cashier didn’t create this. They’re trying to finish the transaction too. The strange part is that the register already knows the price, the tax, the payment and probably how many points you would have earned if you’d joined something. Yet getting proof that the transaction happened may require you to contribute another piece of information.

Then the receipt arrives in your inbox, where it settles between a password reset, a delivery update and fourteen messages you haven’t opened. We’ve replaced a piece of paper you might lose with an email you can search for, provided you remember which address you gave the screen. If you made a typo, somewhere out there is a stranger with a very detailed record of your batteries.

I’m not against emailed receipts. Offer me the option. Just don’t make handing over my email address feel like the final step in buying a bottle of water.

I paid. The water is right here. I think we can call this transaction complete.