Emerging Electronic Receipt Option Requires Creative Thinking For Retailers Under State Law

Recently, several large retail chains have started offering customers the option to receive electronic receipts for in-store purchasers, as the New York Times reports. For instance, a cashier may ask a customer for his or her email address at check-out and then email the receipt to the customer. Paperless receipt programs offer retailers new and exciting marketing opportunities—for instance, adding a retail store purchaser's email address to the company's customer relationship management database, even if that customer never shops online. But with these new opportunities come potential liabilities from old laws that were not written with this new technology in mind.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that place restrictions on a retailer's collection of personal information when a customer pays with a credit card. (A number of states also restrict the collection of personal information when a customer pays by check, but who uses checks anymore?) Of