Digitizing Itemized Receipts: Someone Solve this Problem!
Thanks to services like Mint and Wesabe, my credit card statements and bank bills are much more useful. But they could be even moreso.
When my credit card says I spent $40 at Target, thats aggregated over a whole lot of different items. It’d be totally useful to have those individual purchases separated out online somewhere between the toothpaste, office supplies and magazines I bought.
Getting a feed of that data probably requires the consent of the vendor — and I presume vendors would be reluctant to share the data. If enough customers were aggregating Target’s purchase through Mint (or a comparable service), Mint would have pretty good insight into Target’s business — and wouldn’t necessarily be bound by any agreements about how to share it.
The other option might be to enable consumers to scan the receipts easily. This would require some discipline by the consumer that’s probably doesn’t have a very immediate return. Someone needs to figure this out!
