There are plenty of times people who are traveling do not want a digital record of their payments for things such as alcohol or "food for two"
EDIT: I should have clarified that I was thinking of a digital record in someone else’s possession. Having a record of your own transactions yourself could certainly be useful.
Another reason is so I can audit the charges -- if my credit card had an option for "Don't track individual purchases", I wouldn't use it since I want to look at the charges at the end of the month and make sure they were mine.
(I wrote up something advocating this in https://www.jefftk.com/p/attach-receipts-to-credit-card-tran...)
This is especially true for air travel, where ticket details are almost always attached to the charge. However, I’ve started seeing it done at some large online merchants as well (e.g. Amazon). It’s typically used for expense tracking on corporate p-cards.
It’s rare to see the additional details displayed for consumer accounts, but the data is there on the backend.
- Budgeting
- Mileage points and other rewards
- Being able to dispute transactions
Overall though, few people explicitly want a digital record of all their payments. They are just willing to accept it because of the convenience that credit cards bring.