While shoppers give little thought to the receipt printed and issued at the end of the purchasing transaction, MySlips is aware of the impact on the environment and it is staggering. Statistics in South Africa are harder to come by but in the U.S. slip production consumes 640,000 tons of thermal paper a year, requiring 9.6 million trees for their production alone.
That’s not all. The process consumes 1,474 litres of oil and 71,000 litres of water to produce a single ton of the thermal paper and the CO2 emitted is equivalent to the amount of exhaust emmisions from a car for an entire year and landfills become more and more littered with paper every year.
MySlips believes electronic slips are the answer and also offer consumer convenience where digital slips offer a record of a transaction without the hassle of transporting and filing the paperwork or having the thermal print fade – impacting the ability to produce the document when returning items for whatever reason, be it warranties, repairs or refunds.
The benefits to retailers can also be justified when slips are shared electronically. There is the cost reduction, even if marginal, in paper costs when one considers some of our larger retail outlets are spending thousands of Rands a day on thermal paper rolls.
MySlips offers consumers the option to store their slips online where they are always accessible, always available. The company has been methodical in building its solution over the past 12 months to ensure it is robust and can handle large scale transaction volumes, especially before the coming December shopping season, and more recently has started working with partnered retailers and POS providers to offer the ability to send receipts directly to the MySlips application from the point of sale.
Commercial Director Stan Shaw says “As a progressive technology company we believe we can make inroads into changing the way shoppers see their slips. A piece of paper is very old school and has a detrimental impact on our environment. With MySlips there is a positive impact on both the environment and the consumer all while reducing the overall footprint in shopping. You have to ask why we aren’t driving this harder.”
MySlips is the first independent technology company in South Africa who has developed a local solution to tackle issues around paper based receipts and their conscious effort to positively impact our environment is part of their focus to positively impact the consumer payment experience.