Normally you would use a credit card for shopping so if anything goes wrong, you can prove you have paid and demand your money back - the third party of the credit card company is the witness that you have paid.

But what happens if you pay by cash directly to a person that claims to represent a shop? A written receipt means nothing nowadays, anyone can print a fake one.

Is there an electronic way to prove you have paid in cash? If bitcoin can do it, there has to be a way. How does this work?

The normal thing in your case (person claiming to represent a shop - thereby implying you are not at the shop now) would be to phone the shop and confirm that this is a genuine representative and is authorized to collect cash and issue a receipt.

Note that even in the case of payment by credit card, the merchant's name may be similar to but not exactly the same as the genuine shop.

OK

What if the shop itself is rogue, how do I prove to court that I paid in cash? Can an email with an electronic signature be used?

What about carrying a laptop and having the payee carry a usb flash stick and leave something in the laptop's hard disk?

If it were me buying bitcoins by paying cash, the payee would do just the above, wouldn't they?

Encryption/signing is not a security question?

As the usual street buisness goes down: Goods first, money afterwards.

Else have the seller show you his ID and note down the essential. Thus ID's can also be counterfeit.

Won't work very well if the goods are services. Can't believe no one has invented peer-to-peer electronic receipts yet.

This is all Caveat Emptor.

I heard a story about women driving from our local area, including New York, to some remote location in New Hampshire all so they could get a faux Coach bag. The "deal" was that they entered a van and paid in cash and were handed their bag and emerged with their purchase.

The beyond amazing part was that many of them accepted that even though they recognized the shadiness of it. After all, they had driven a hundred or more miles to get a Coach bag for $40 versus $400. Acknowledging that they also were fake bags.

I bore no witness to this, and granted hubby could be standing right outside the van with all kinds of weapons and such, and it apparently was just a van in a parking lot. But .... GEE!!!!!!

Services or electronics ... difficult to determine. Someone's selling you an iPhone 6 for $40, you go "I WANT IT!!!" but how do you validate that it's an actual iPhone 6?

How about being from Missouri, the "Show Me" state where you don't trust anybody? And realizing that if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is.

Sure I'm positive one can "find" a 95% markdown on a very expensive thing. Well, 100% markdown is called theft, and likely some form of theft or fraud is why you lucky devil can get that possible 95% markdown, or all your friends who tell you this story.

I've been to a market where you pay cash and "What you see is what you get" is the rule. I'm sure this is absolutely the rule here too.

You can't lawyer up everything. You take the chance to buy $1000 of iTunes money but only pay $50 cash for it, you run the risk that when you go to activate that card, it won't work.

BUT if you buy a blanket or a T-Shirt, I'm guessing you'll have a chance at being satisfied to some degree. I mean you can tell if it has holes in it.

So there is no such thing as peer-to-peer electronic receipts, and there is no need for it?
All you need to do is exchange cash for physical goods and never buy services for cash?

What if the credit card company gets rogue?

At the checkout stand of any grocery store, you can by a "reloadable debit-card." Although the fees associated with such things are high, they do provide you with "a credit-card number that works for the occasion."

Simply buy the card, put the appropriate amount of money on it, and use it to complete the transaction.

Don't let this or any debit-card "link to an auxiliary source-of-funding 'to protect you from overdrafts.'" Be sure that the fine-print says that, if the money isn't there, the transaction will be declined, as of course it should be. (Even PayPal will want to "helpfully" do otherwise. Don't do it.) You want to use the service to provide the vendor with third-party-verifiable access to: "this quantity of money, and not one drachma more." If someone steals the number, it won't do them a damn bit of good. One pocket is not linked to any other pocket.

After a few weeks or months, notify the debit-card vendor that the account is closed, and drop the card itself into a paper-shredder. Next time, go get another one. Meanwhile, be sure to keep careful records of what the number was, where and when you used it, and for what amounts.

Of course, reputable vendors prefer this system, too, because it covers their just as it covers yours. There is independent evidence that the transaction took place, and there is a well-defined body of law to protect the interests of both parties.

You can get a written receipt. If you ask and the person doesn't agree to provide, then you have the option of not purchasing. Of course there can be electronic receipts, that would be email.

You really should talk to a contract lawyer. A contract is written or spoken, provided the two parties agreed upon something. And they are defensible in court. However if one party says "We agreed to this" and the other says "We never agreed to that" then the judge or clerk magistrate has to evaluate the case and "judge" who they feel is telling the truth.

But you want absolute, don't you? If the merchant is unwilling to provide then that's the end of the story. If they're willing to send you an email receipt or make a webpage where you can download or view the receipt, then great. If they're not willing to do that, then that's as far as you can, and probably should, go with that merchant. One could hardly call them a merchant if they're not willing to stand up for something they're selling.

Now granted, people can also sell stuff "as is" which is what people do with like a very old or very badly conditioned car and state "no warranty" in fact the opposite here is usually true where the seller would insist on a receipt where they state these things explicitly so that you can't drag them into court complaining that you got taken, their intention there is they sold "for parts" or a known bad/out of date item.

What's the question here? Whether or not you've purchased a credit/debit card for general use using cash? Or what happens/can happen if you purchase some good or service using cash?

Either case, you buy some debit card from a guy with a trench coat, it may not be legit. And as sundialsvcs is pointing out, you can buy debit/credit cards from places like Walmart or Stop and Shop. I guess it depends where your locality is, country included. I personally would not buy a credit/debit card from a street vendor.

The question is how do you replace paper receipts with something electronic that does not involve credit card companies.

We do not want official credit card companies and we do not want guys in trenchcoats either for the same reason. Soon the unthinkable will happen and your official bank and credit card company will go rogue: they will confiscate your savings and pension funds, zero your debit and prepaid cards, swell your credit cards with illegal charges and taxes, demand that you get chipped and only those chipped will be able to buy things.

A plain email is no good as a receipt, do I have to keep stating the obvious? Some sort of electronic receipt is needed that does not involve credit cards.

The money has to go from your bank to their bank somehow. If you pay cash you need a signed document, preferably witnessed or a video of the transaction.
I know I'm going to sound like I'm "sticking up for the man" here but, really, that's why it's safer to use a credit card. If you can get hold of a one-use one all the better.
To my mind it's cash for consumables and cheap goods and cards for more expensive things requiring warranty.
There's also the fact that it is generally (but not always) better to buy from more established vendors as they're less likely to wipe the security tape of you guying the item at the time your receipt suggests. Oh, and please realise that the store also has a copy of that receipt printed at the same time from the same roll in the till to prevent cashier fraud.
Sorry, reminds me of a friend who gave a £20 note to a cashier and was given change for £10 -- he noticed this just after we left the shop and returned to protest his case. Sadly nobody but him had seen and, as we had been drinking, even the group of friends weren't sure he was telling the truth. So, he insisted they play the CCTV tape. They got the manager and the tape was played and, surely enough, they owed my friend £10.

I'll put this in a separate post because I realised I was wrong in my above. Buying cash for things like new laptops should be fine from all but the most backstreet of shops. Why? Because simply being in possession of a laptop which was previously shipped to that store and not being on CCTV stealing it but, potentially, being on CCTV buying it and having a receipt matched to the till (or their till roll and CCTV footage mysteriously vanished) is a fairly good "balance of doubt" indicator you bought it there.
For things like cars in the UK it's even easier as one can only legally obtain a car from its registered owner so if you are in possession of the car and the relevant half of the "logbook" that's proof you were in contact with the owner. If you have a signed receipt in the owner's handwriting you're pretty much going to be in the clear. If you were to steal the vehicle and fake a receipt (as the owner must allege if they are trying to say they didn't sell it) then it would become a criminal case and as long as you didn't steal it the evidence would be unlikely to point to theft.

Do you need to prove to the store that you've paid in cash, or do you need to prove to the court that you've paid in cash? The two are quite different.

Most states require by law that a receipt be printed.