Digital receipts and retail media: how retailers can use first-party data

Retail media is growing fast, but so far, most budgets and measurement models have focused on digital channels. Digital receipts could help bring brick-and-mortar transactions more fully into the picture.

Retail media is one of the fastest-growing segments in European digital advertising. According to IAB Europe, the sector grew by 22.2 percent in 2024. The association expects European retail media spending to reach €31 billion by 2028.

Here's the curious part: almost all of that growth is happening online. Yet brick-and-mortar retail still accounts for roughly 70 percent of global retail sales – and so far, it has largely been left out of the retail media conversation. That's exactly where the digital receipt comes in.

A click or an online shopping cart only signals interest – after all, many of those overstuffed carts never turn into a purchase. The receipt, by contrast, documents what actually crossed the counter: the completed purchase, not just the intent. That makes it one of the most reliable forms of first-party purchase data. It delivers the who, what, where, and when of every transaction: products and combinations, quantity, price, retailer, date, time. From this, retailers can read basket composition and purchase frequency – and even how much of a given purchase went to competitors. Because the data is generated with consent at the point of sale, it's considered GDPR-compliant. The decisive advantage over clicks and impressions: marketing can be tied almost entirely to actual revenue. In the post-third-party-cookie era, that's worth a great deal.

As an advertising channel, the digital receipt has a rare advantage: every transaction creates exactly one guaranteed point of contact. Whoever buys gets the receipt. Retailers can turn it into a media channel of its own – with space for offers, tailored recommendations, or sponsored placements from brand partners.

The market is growing accordingly: analytics firm market.us puts the global volume of digital receipts at $750 million for 2024 and expects it to reach roughly $5.2 billion by 2034 – an annual increase of 21.4 percent. The potential is still barely tapped: in the US, digital-receipt provider refive found that less than one percent of retail media spending in 2024 went to in-store channels.

In practice, the receipt is becoming a bridge to the customer relationship – via two very different routes. Drugstore chain Rossmann integrated the digital receipt into its app together with provider anybill and POS partner Combase, rolling it out across more than 2,300 stores. According to anybill, this boosted app downloads and user engagement; more importantly, the real-time transaction data now provides the foundation for new retail media opportunities.

That the receipt can pay off even without an elaborate data strategy is shown by textile retailer AWG. Together with anybill, the company introduced the digital receipt across all 248 of its stores – accessible via QR code directly at the customer display, with or without the app, integrated into the existing POS system. The benefit is immediately tangible: AWG saves significant amounts of thermal paper and handles returns more easily, since the receipt can be looked up at any time. At the same time, it creates new space for offers and promotions – an additional touchpoint with more than 3.5 million holders of the AWG CARD. "We're not only saving substantial amounts of thermal paper, we're also creating a valuable additional customer touchpoint," AWG CEO Michael Hövelmann told anybill.

As big as the story sounds, the hurdles are just as real:

• First, acceptance: no data without customer consent. The receipt only works if people actually adopt the digital version.
• Second, data privacy: once purchases are linked to a specific person, sensitive data is created. That's only permissible if retailers disclose what they do with it and strictly comply with the GDPR.
• Third, fragmentation: there are many competing providers and POS systems but no shared standard. For customers and retailers alike, this creates isolated solutions rather than one receipt system that works everywhere.
• Fourth, caution is warranted with the numbers: many of the optimistic figures come from providers that sell digital receipt solutions themselves.

For retailers, the digital receipt pays off on two levels. In the short term, even without a sophisticated data strategy, it cuts costs, simplifies returns, and saves paper – as the AWG case shows. But the real lever sits one level up: retailers who integrate the receipt into an app and customer account turn every transaction into a first-party data point and lay the groundwork for their own retail media business – as Rossmann demonstrates. The order matters: build acceptance and trust first, then tap the data goldmine. Those who manage both turn even the most unassuming slip of paper into their own advertising and data channel. Those who only save paper leave the real potential on the table.