Platforma Detalistów, a company cooperating with retail chains such as Ikea, Decathlon or LPP (owner of Reserved, Cropp, Mohito), today boasted about implementing a system for issuing and receiving electronic receipts. The solution was developed in cooperation with, among others manufacturer of Novitus cash registers.

The first electronic receipts have already been issued using a system called Spark. Currently, it is used by one of the bakeries in Warsaw. Larger implementations are planned in the near future - Cezary Pierzan, the president of Platforma Detalistów, assured in an interview with cashless.pl.

Interestingly, however, the Spark system also allows contactless mobile payments and this, note, not only on Android phones, but also on iOS, bypassing such wallets as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and without the use of payment terminals. To use the Spark system, you need an application under the same name, available in the App Store and Google Play. You can add a card or several cards from any bank to the app. How does it work?

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Platforma Detalistów equips retail outlets with passive NFC chips (used for proximity communication, similar sensors are installed e.g. in contactless cards). The chip does not require integration with any electronic systems, nor is it connected to electricity or the Internet, and it costs, as the representative of the Retail Platform said, "bottom" tens of zlotys. With the help of these chips, the seller is identified and the rest of the payment process and the generation and submission of the receipt is done in the user's application.

The user, after installing the Spark mobile application and adding a bank card to it, brings his smartphone closer to the NFC reader in a store or other service point. In the application, he then receives information about his transaction. After its approval, the payment is made from the card account, and an electronic receipt appears in the transaction history in the app.

How is it possible that the payment is made bypassing Apple Pay or Google Pay? - From a formal point of view, the transaction is not carried out via contactless communication. The NFC Spark chip is used to identify the parties to the transaction, and the payment is made online, as is the payment for a taxi ride with a card connected to the Uber application - says Cezary Pierzan. He adds that the e-receipt is sent in the same way. When implementing the payment function, the Platforma Detalistów cooperated with the operator of Przelewy24.

“The boundaries between online and traditional commerce are becoming increasingly blurred. For the first time, the cooperation and implementation of the Spark system allows us to make electronic payments in traditional commerce without the participation of a card terminal, which gives access to a number of additional values for both parties to the transaction, such as lower cost of payment processing", says Jacek Kinecki, member of the PayPro management board. the Przelewy24 system operator.

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The applied solution seems revolutionary, because it allows you to integrate cards issued by any banks and fintechs in one wallet, without the need for the operator of the Spark application to establish direct relations with them. Not only that, it allows for the implementation of contactless payments with Apple devices, bypassing the existing infrastructure of card terminals, which are also used by systems such as closed Apple Pay.

The president of the Platforma Detalistów says that the existing systems based on terminals are not ready to handle transactions in the model developed by the company he represents. - Spark uses the available technological possibilities and meets the formal requirements. NFC communication in Apple devices has been appropriately adapted here and is one of the elements of this new, alternative infrastructure - says Cezary Pierzan.

I would like to remind you that Apple has still not fully opened the NFC sensors placed in its smartphones for payments made by external suppliers. - Our solution does not formally use NFC for card payments, so Apple's restrictions do not apply to us. It is worth noting that there are already known solutions in the world that enable payments with Apple devices outside the Apple Pay system, using, for example, Bluetooth communication (in Poland, for example, Jiffee, editor's note). Americans have so far not taken any steps to block such services, what is more, they are opening up to such use of their devices - says Cezary Pierzan.

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The representative of the Platforma Detalistów also said that it is already working on an alternative method of initiating payments and sending e-receipts, using dynamic bar codes displayed on the buyer's smartphone screen.

According to Cezary Pierzan, from today the Spark solution is available, after a simple integration, for every store with the appropriate Novitus online fiscal device. The list of producers and the fiscal devices themselves is to be expanded in the near future. The Spark application is free and available to any interested customer who has a payment card that allows online payments. The Spark system can also be integrated with any other application, e.g. offered by a retail network.