Data collection is an essential tool for businesses that enables them to learn more about their customer’s wants and needs, allowing them to deliver a more customised experience by creating personalised marketing campaigns, products and services. This sensitive personal information – names, social security numbers, credit cards, or any other data, is kept by most companies that also helps them in identifying different customers, filling orders, payroll and other important business functions.
However, if sensitive data is inadequately protected and falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to fraud, identity theft, or similar harms. This is where customer privacy comes into play. It involves handling and protecting the sensitive personal information provided by the customers in everyday transactions so that it is not misused.
Paper receipts provide no privacy to the customer’s shopping data
Digital receipts are replacing paper receipts, and rightly so. They have added benefits over the paper receipts making them a better choice. Being environmentally friendly, convenient and manageable (easy to file and to find if you want to return an item or make a warranty claim, or for other business purposes) and helping retailers with deeper insight into consumer shopping habits leading to better advertising and services, are some of the features that are making digital receipts the preferred choice.
Another important reason is that paper receipts are not feasible for protecting the personal data of the customers. Firstly, with all the transactions happening in a day, it is difficult to store and manage all the receipts. Having personal information in them, they need to be kept carefully and properly disposed of if they are not of use. If found in the wrong hands, this sensitive information in these receipts can be easily misused. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for companies to collect personal data they do not have an immediate use for, reasoning that it might be valuable someday. All this sensitive information in a printed format can make it accessible to any person, increasing the risk of privacy being breached.
Receipts Minder as a Solution
We here in Receipts Minder believe in “Your Data, Your Right, Your Control”. With our belief that customer privacy needs to be protected, we have made this platform knowing that to earn customers’ trust, we need to be transparent about the data we are gathering and using. This data is not only accessible to businesses but using Receipts Minder makes it available to consumers as well.
Moreover, it keeps private data securely on the cloud, giving the consumer transparent communication and intuitive consent options to give, review and withdraw approval for processing the data.
It also gives each consumer a unique identity number, which can be used at a point in the sales system instead of their mobile phone numbers or email address, which they are often hesitant to share. Email address or mobile phone will only be used to receive One-Time Passwords (OTPs) for registration and login processes.
The advent of the internet has certainly made our life way easier by providing many services, but it also has increased the risks concerning the privacy of its users. Since it’s our information, we need to be careful about it and look for platforms that help us in protecting it. Receipts minders not only enable us to make receipts managing easy while going paperless, but it also provides a medium where we can see and choose what personal information is shared. When we as customers are given this transparency, we can trust and be at ease knowing that our data is safe.
