France postpones the elimination of the paper purchase receipt until August

After two postponements, France will finally end the paper receipt on August 1, 2023, as confirmed on Saturday (04.01.2023) in an announcement published in the official gazette. The suppression of the obligatory receipt has as main objective to protect the environment.

The measure derives from a circular economy law approved in 2020 and was originally supposed to enter into force on January 1, 2022. Initially it was postponed to April 1, and now the introduction of this measure has been set for August 1. The Government had already admitted last month that it could not be maintained on April 1. The Government justified the new postponement with the rise in prices in supermarkets: “When you have 15% inflation on the shelves and the receipt is a reference point for many French people, it seemed important to us to preserve this reference point until there is past the peak of inflation,” said Vice Minister of Commerce Olivia Grégoire.

As of August 1, it will only be possible to continue taking home a paper receipt at the express request of customers. Every year about 30 billion cash receipts are printed in France. According to a survey by the French Retail Association, more than half of French people still want to explicitly ask for a hard copy in the future. The data protection authority Cnil wants to develop solution proposals for a form of electronic receipt that respects data protection, which customers could receive, for example, by scanning a QR code that is regenerated at the checkout after each transaction.