Receipt lottery: the flop and the government plans
How is the receipt lottery going and what will happen next
Only 26.8% of merchants allow their customers to participate in the receipt lottery . The government is working on the introduction of a new mechanism to make the initiative more attractive also through instant winnings.
What is the receipt lottery
The receipt lottery is a free lottery linked to the Italia Cashless program developed by the government to encourage electronic payments and discourage the use of cash.
How does it work
Consumers who want to participate in the lottery must obtain a unique identification code from the Lottery receipt site and show it with every purchase made with cards or ATMs. Consumers will be entitled to a virtual ticket for every euro spent . You cannot participate in the lottery with purchases of less than one euro, with purchases made online and with those made in the exercise of a business, art or profession. Merchants can also participate in the receipt lottery and win.
The prizes and the draws
Every week there is a drawing with 15 prizes of 25 thousand euros for buyers and 15 prizes of 5 thousand euros for exhibitors / retailers and monthly draws with 10 prizes of 100 thousand euros for buyers and 10 prizes of 20 thousand euros. for merchants. There is an annual jackpot draw of € 5 million for the buyer and a prize of € 1 million for the merchant . Citizens and merchants can check the outcome of the drawings through the receipt lottery portal by logging into their own reserved area.
Who runs the lottery
There are three parties interested in managing the receipt lottery: the Ministry of Economy, the Customs and Monopolies Agency and the Revenue Agency. Sogei , the 100% Information Technology company of the Ministry of Economy and Finance , has created the entire receipt lottery system, breaking it down into a set of subsystems. The electronic receipt is issued by the Revenue Agency while the Customs and Monopoly Agency takes care of scheduling the extractions.
The uncertainty of small traders
As Il Sole24Ore writes, exhibitors and traders did not participate with conviction in the government initiative. "Compared to 5.9 million lottery codes issued to 4.7 million users , the operators that transmit lottery data are only 26.8% of the total (or 369,000 out of 1,320,000)," said the Undersecretary for the Economy Federico Freni in response to a question from the Democratic Party (first signatory Gian Mario Fragomeli) in the Finance Committee in the Chamber. The measure does not seem to have convinced small traders. "Although most of the large retailers have adapted – reads the Mef's reply – to the lottery provisions, the most significant criticality concerns the small and medium-sized operators who, in the absence of sanctions, remain in breach of the legal obligation to transmit the data".
The initiatives to make it more attractive
The government is working on an instant win mechanism that allows buyers and merchants to know immediately if they have won or not, without having to wait for the weekly , monthly or annual draws . "The Customs and Monopolies Agency reports that the introduction of an instant extraction method that allows the buyer to immediately know the outcome of participation in the lottery can be carried out without prejudice to the necessary changes and additions and the essential adjustments of the computer systems currently used and of the merchants' cash registers ”, say from the MEF.
The lottery on the IO App
The instant lottery will have to rely on a new software to be installed on the telematic recorders that allows the attribution of the winnings to be immediately carried out. One of the alternatives is to use the IO App, initially used for cashback.
The history of the receipt lottery
The receipt lottery was created in 2008 by the computer scientist Vincenzo Bacarella . Then in his thirties he proposed his idea in a competition organized by the Carlo Alberto College of Turin and aimed at gathering ideas for the economy, involving young people throughout the national territory. The idea pleased the then Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti who accepted the proposal to combat tax evasion. However, the project failed to get off the ground. The receipt lottery is back in the 2017 budget law and initially it was thought to also include cash payments, with a lower probability of winning than electronic payments. The decision to allow only electronic payments exclusively was taken only in the latest budget law .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/lotteria-degli-scontrini-il-flop-e-i-piani-del-governo/ on Tue, 09 Nov 2021 07:19:16 +0000.