How does a digital receipt work?

A digital receipt starts at the point of sale and ends in your inbox, app, or cloud storage. Here is the process from transaction to record.

At the point of sale

When a transaction is processed — whether via EFTPOS, credit card, or a mobile payment system — the POS software records the transaction details: merchant, date, time, items, amounts, GST, and payment method. Most modern POS systems can generate a receipt record in a structured format (typically a PDF or HTML email) in addition to printing a paper receipt.

Delivery to the customer

The receipt is sent to the customer's email address or phone number, either entered at the time of purchase or stored against a customer account or loyalty program. Larger retailers may use dedicated receipt platforms that handle the formatting and delivery.

What the customer receives

Typically an HTML email (formatted to look like a receipt) with a PDF attachment, or a plain text email for simpler systems. The email should contain all the information that would appear on a paper receipt, plus a transaction reference number.

Storage and retrieval

The receipt lives in your email inbox unless you actively move or delete it. Receipt management apps like rct-keep give you a dedicated address to forward receipts to — the app then extracts key fields using OCR and organises them by category and date, creating a searchable, permanent record without any manual data entry.

For online purchases

The process is the same, except the receipt is generated by the e-commerce platform rather than a physical POS system. Order confirmation emails are legally equivalent to receipts for most purposes.