On a busy weekday in Budapest, the receipt is usually the least interesting part of the checkout moment. A small strip of paper, handed over without drama, then forgotten in a pocket.
Hungary is quietly turning that привычный, almost invisible ritual into something very different: a digital, cryptographically secured document that lives in a government repository for a decade, can be retrieved through a QR code, and can become the default proof of purchase—while paper becomes the “only if you ask” option.
This article is based on a recent Fiscal Solutions webinar (view recording –> https://www.fiscal-requirements.com/webinars/36) hosted by Tara Nedeljković and István Bozóki, where they unpacked what is changing, what’s already live, and why POS vendors and Tier 1 retailers should treat Hungary as a “preview” of where fiscalization is heading next.
A receipt that doesn’t end at the printer
Under Hungary’s new model, e-receipts are defined as digitally produced receipts issued by e-cash registers by default. Paper is still possible but becomes secondary and should be provided on the customer’s explicit request.
The part that changes the game is where the receipt lives.
Each receipt is stored in the tax authority’s central repository, officially referred to as the Receipt Store, and retained for 10 years. In other words, the receipt becomes a long-lived digital record that serves as legal proof for both the customer and the tax authority.
For retailers, that’s not just “paperless.” That’s a redesign of the checkout contract. The receipt is no longer a disposable artifact you print and forget; it becomes a digital object that must be produced correctly, secured correctly, delivered correctly, and retrievable correctly.
The infrastructure behind the new checkout
What makes Hungary’s approach especially important for retail tech is that it’s not “one new device.” It’s an ecosystem with multiple moving parts:
1) New e-cash register options (and not everyone can choose freely).
Hungary’s ePG direction supports multiple solution types (including hardware-based and cloud-based options, plus customer app-driven concepts), with voluntary adoption already possible and a staged rollout toward 2028.
In practice, the webinar highlighted an important constraint: cloud-based e-cash registers are not available to everyone. Taxpayers who fall under mandatory online cash register obligations (the “classic” OPG group) are generally not eligible for the cloud option and are expected to move to hardware-based e-cash registers instead.
That matters because many global retailers assume “cloud is the default future.” Hungary’s model says: not always—eligibility and taxpayer category can decide architecture.
2) A “customer app” becomes part of the fiscal experience.
Customer applications are not formally mandatory for every shopper but they become the practical mechanism to download and store e-receipts from the Receipt Store. These apps must be certified, generate encryption key pairs, and can transmit buyer preferences (loyalty ID, invoice request, payment preferences) through the QR code/NFC flow into the checkout process.
This is where the compliance story quietly turns into a customer-experience story.
Retailers will need to explain a new “receipt reality” at the checkout: what the e-receipt is, how it’s accessed, and how paper still works, without slowing down the line.
3) QR codes stop being “nice to have” and become a system connector.
Hungary’s QR code is not treated as a cosmetic detail. It’s a linking mechanism between the e-cash register, customer application, and the tax authority. The QR code can carry key transaction identifiers (transaction number, time of sale, etc.) and enables retrieval of the e-receipt from the Receipt Store.
For POS vendors, this pushes QR from “print a code” into “support a data exchange process.”
4) The KOVÁCS portal becomes the control tower.
Operators will need to manage e-cash register lifecycle events through the Kovács portal: registration, requesting codes before use, reporting activation/suspension, location changes, and start-of-use events. It’s also used today for managing current online cash registers and is expected to expand as the rollout continues.
If you sell POS into Hungary, your compliance model is no longer just “certify a device.” It’s also: “Can your operations team handle lifecycle governance at scale?”
Timeline: the deadline that looks far away, until it doesn’t
The rollout is designed to be gradual. Voluntary adoption has been possible from July 1, 2025, but the reality today is that available certified solutions are still limited—primarily to tax authority-developed basic cloud solutions, according to the webinar discussion of current status.
Here’s the date that should sit on every roadmap: July 1, 2028.
That is presented as the point when the transition period ends for businesses that are currently obligated under the online cash register model, they must move to the new e-cash register regime by then.
In large retail organizations, 2028 is not “later.” It’s one major POS release cycle plus one major certification cycle plus one major rollout cycle, and that assumes everything goes smoothly.
Compliance risk moves from “audit day” to “every day”
One detail from the webinar that tends to wake up boards and CFOs: the enforcement model is built to punish operational negligence, not just fraud.
The speakers noted penalty exposure for using non-certified systems (for retailers), for service failures (manufacturers/distributors), and even for not repairing hardware-based e-cash registers within a defined timeframe, with a cited five-business-day window to repair or attempt repair and inform the authority.
The deeper shift is psychological: compliance stops being a “quarterly check.” It becomes something closer to uptime. Your fiscal capability must work continuously, under real store conditions, and the ecosystem (device + portal + QR + receipt store + customer flows) must hold together under pressure.
What this means for POS software vendors
Hungary is a reminder that “POS compliance” is no longer only about receipt content and daily reports. It’s becoming:
- Identity and security (signing, secure issuance, certified components)
- Connectivity and resilience (some models can’t operate offline)
- Lifecycle governance (registration, activation codes, location updates)
- Customer-facing change management (paper on request, app-based receipt retrieval)
- Interoperability (QR-driven link between POS, customer app, and authority)
In other words, fiscalization is moving closer to being a platform capability—not a local integration project you “finish once.”
The strategic move: treat Hungary as a forecast, not a country project
For international retailers and POS vendors, Hungary isn’t just a Hungarian story. It’s a clear signal of where European fiscalization is evolving: more digital receipts, more centralized storage, more cryptographic trust, and more “system design” requirements that touch UX, operations, and IT architecture at the same time.
If you wait until certified vendor ecosystems are mature and the market is crowded, you’ll still have to move fast, but with less leverage and more risk.
If you start early, you can do something rare in compliance work: turn it into an advantage.