One of the first European countries to introduce the security element, or the signature device as the core of the country’s fiscalization concept was Austria.
Germany followed with a very similar requirement and most recently Serbia introduced, as one of the main components of the POS solution, also a security element.
The signing obligation in Austria is mandatory from 2017, but it is a long enough time period to consider the system as stable and completely country-covered.
The purpose of the digital signature is manipulation prevention. The chain of transactions which is created as the result of the transactions signing disables undetected changes of fiscal data.
The signature value must also be a part of the receipt – included in a machine-readable code, after the signature value of the previous transaction.
Besides standard transactions, in the chain are included very specific Austrian control transactions, so no fiscal document is left outside of the chain.
The signature element can be a hardware or a software component, since the Austrian law does not strictly define the fiscalization system as a hardware or software based – the main aim of the law is to ensure the integrity of fiscal data and prevent any subsequent changes, which can be achieved with different types of such elements.
Contribution by: jbfiscalconsulting.com
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