How can we trash them?

It's Apple's (AAPL) fault I hate receipts. A few years ago, I grabbed some computer accessory off an Apple Store shelf and brought it to the cashier. I pulled out my paper-stuffed Costanza wallet and gave the cashier my card. Then he asked an unexpected question: "Do you want us to e-mail you your receipt?"

I said yes and thus, unwittingly, began a crusade against the paper receipt—a slip too analog, too temporary, and too wasteful to be anything but superfluous. It is a relic of another age, when record-stuffed filing cabinets lingered in musty basements; when patriarchs sat down with a checkbook on Sunday afternoons while the football game was on; and when we expected to search for things for hours, not seconds. Apple had recognized and made explicit an anachronism of our times. We no longer need a piece of paper to tell us what we bought, just the information that's trapped inside it.

I should be clear that I am not against the idea of the receipt. I am against the piece of paper it comes on. I am against the sly way that it refuses to make its information searchable. I am against its demand that I be the one who files it away—it should be responsible and find a way to file itself. I understand that consumers and merchants alike need records of what we bought. I just want those to be digital.

I recently visited an Apple Store again and was reminded just how simple it is to e-mail myself a receipt. A scan, a swipe, and some questions—so easy that it's hard to understand why we aren't making any progress toward a receiptless utopia. And so the journalistic question was formed: What would it take to trash the receipt?

A costly, complicated, and unlikely chain reaction. For the vision to become a reality, it's going to have to start with the credit card companies. The key flaw in Apple's strategy is that you have to give the store your e-mail address in order to get the receipt e-mailed. That's fine when receipts by e-mail are a one-store novelty, but it will quickly grow annoying if we need to say our e-mail address every time we shop at a different store. If we want wholesale change, we're going to have to figure out a centralized way for stores to access our e-mail addresses.

This is where the credit card companies come in. First thought: Let's put our e-mail addresses on that magnetic strip on the back of the card. All sorts of other data lives back there, so there's no reason why our e-mail addresses can't as well. I put in a call to four big credit card companies—American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa—and all of them either declined comment or did not respond. But I spoke with other experts in the industry, and they say it's possible to pop some more data onto that magnetic strip.