Patent Application
20090259578
1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present disclosure relate in general to financial services. Aspects include an apparatus, system, method and computer-readable storage medium configured to record and identify customer exclusive data on a payment card or device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, credit card issuers offer many different types of incentives to encourage card holders to use credit cards for their purchases. For example, some credit card issuers offer card holders frequent-flyer miles, cash back, or other combinations of rewards and rebates.
At the same time, issuers lack the ability to present card holders instant reward information.
Described embodiments include a system and method configured to record and identify customer exclusive data on a payment card or device. Despite the fact that the industry does not capture or utilize such information, one aspect of the invention includes the insight that tracking customer exclusive data used would be useful. A cardholder database contains primary account numbers of user accounts. Customer exclusive data may be associated with the primary account number. A customer data manager queries the cardholder database to determine whether there is customer exclusive data and send the customer exclusive data for storage on a payment device.
Although the payment card industry does not currently capture or utilize customer exclusive data on a payment card or device, one aspect of the present includes the insight that tracking customer exclusive data in a financial transaction would be useful to consumers, card issuers, and card payment processors at the time of the transaction. First, card holders will be able to use customer exclusive data to identifier themselves, and therefore decrease fraudulent transactions. Issuers and payment processors may also use customer exclusive data to enable incentives for card holders at the time of the transaction, instead of days or weeks afterwards.
For the purposes of this document, a payment card may be any credit, debit, or financial transaction identification card capable of storing customer exclusive data.
A payment device may be any credit, debit, or financial transaction device, mobile phone, or identification card capable of storing customer exclusive data for use in a financial transaction.
A financial transaction is any operation involving a payment device, whether a payment, reimbursement, or any other interaction using a payment device. Financial transactions may be credit, debit, or charge transactions.
Embodiments of the present invention include a system, method, and computer-readable storage medium configured to record customer exclusive data on to a payment device used in a financial transaction. Other embodiments of the present invention may include remote terminals configured to capture, encode, or record the customer exclusive data information.
Turning to
When the consumer uses the payment device 100 at a merchant 1100 to pay for a product or service, the merchant 1100 contacts an acquirer 1200 (for example, a commercial bank) to determine whether the consumer is credit worthy or the account has sufficient funds on the card to pay for the transaction. The acquirer 1200 forwards the details of the payment transaction to a payment processor 2000 or payment card issuing bank 1300 (“the issuer”) for processing.
Payment processor 2000 may be any payment network known in the art. Examples of payment networks include Visa™, MasterCard™, and American Express™.
Issuer 1300 may be any financial institution or organization that issues the payment device 100.
Embodiments will now be disclosed with reference to a payment processor 2000 depicted in
Payment processor 2000 may run a multi-tasking operating system (OS) and include at least one processor or central processing unit (CPU) 2100. Processor 2100 may be any central processing unit, microprocessor, micro-controller, computational device or circuit known in the art.
It is well understood by those in the art, that the functional elements of
Processor 2100 interfaces with storage medium 2300, network interface 2200, card transceiver/scanner 2500, and, in some embodiments, mobile telephony interface 2400. The data processor 2102 enables processor 2100 to locate data on, read data from, and writes data to, these components.
Network interface 2200 may be any data port as is known in the art for interfacing, communicating or transferring data across a computer network, examples of such networks include Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), token bus, or token ring networks. Network interface 2200 allows payment processor 2000 to communicate with issuer 1300, and may allow communication with acquirer 1200.
Computer-readable storage medium 2300 may be a conventional read/write memory such as a magnetic disk drive, floppy disk drive, compact-disk read-only-memory (CD-ROM) drive, digital versatile disk (DVD) drive, high definition digital versatile disk (HD-DVD) drive, magneto-optical drive, optical drive, flash memory, memory stick, transistor-based memory or other computer-readable memory device as is known in the art for storing and retrieving data. Significantly, computer-readable storage medium 2300 may be remotely located from processor 2100, and be connected to processor 2100 via a network such as a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), or the Internet. In addition, as shown in
Card transceiver/scanner 2500 may be any component known in the art capable of read/writing data to or from payment devices 100. For example, for conventional credit card 100a or mini-card 100d embodiments, card transceiver/scanner 2500 may read or write to a magnetic strip. Embodiments that communicate with a contactless card 100b, mobile phone 100c, and micro tag/key fob 100e include a wireless transceiver.
Mobile telephony interface 2400 is a wireless phone transceiver capable of communicating with mobile phone payment devices 100c. Wireless phone transceivers may communicate with any wireless telephony system known in the art. Such systems include, but are not limited to: digital cellular and personal communication systems (PCS). Message formats include, but are not limited to Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Wireless Internet (WAP), or any other mobile telephony standard known in the art.
The function of these structures may best be understood with respect to
In one embodiment of Field 55, the Field 55 data elements may include: amount authorized 3010 (tag 9F02), unpredictable number 3020 (9F37), application transaction count (ATC) 3030 (tag 9F36), issuer application data (IAD) 3040 (tag 9F10), application cryptogram 3050 (tag 9F26), customer exclusive data 4000 (tag 9F7C), and form factor identifier 6000 (tag 9F6E). Tag 97FC carries customer exclusive data that issuer 1300 receives in an authorization request message during contactless transactions. For the purposes of this application, we need only address customer exclusive data 4000 and form factor identifier 6000.
A data parser 2112 associated with the fraud prevention engine is configured to parse and address the Field 55 data tags. In some embodiments, data parser 2112 further performs editing, storage, distribution, monitoring, and reporting functions.
Tag 9F7C (customer exclusive data 4000) is configured to allow transport and storage of a number of different issuer and cardholder specific information.
The data stored in Field 55 may be stored in any format known in the art. Some tag embodiments, as shown in
Examples of customer exclusive data 4000 include, but are not limited to:
Loyalty and Coupons 4100
Rewards 4320
Alerts and Contact Information 4330
Other Types of Data Including Issuer Discretionary Data 4340
We now turn our attention to method or process embodiments of the present invention,
At block 7002, customer data manager 2116 receives payment device 100. If a primary account number (PAN) is already electronically stored or physically imprinted on the device 100, as determined at decision block 7004, flow continues at block 7010. If no primary account number is already stored on the device 100, a new account is looked up at block 7006, and a new primary account number is assigned to device 100, block 7008.
Customer data manager 2116 queries cardholder database 2310 to see if any customer exclusive data 4000 is associated with the primary account number, block 7010. The associated customer exclusive data 4000 is retrieved from the cardholder database 2310, block 7012, and stored at the payment device 100, block 7014. Process 7000 ends.
Process 8000 begins when the financial transaction is received at merchant 1100. At block 8002, a point-of-sale read/writer device receives transaction data from the payment device 100. The transaction data may be received as part of an authorization request or customer inquiry, as a customer uses payment device 100 to pay for a financial transaction. The transaction data is received via a card transceiver/scanner and includes information such as the primary account number. Usually, a payment device's Primary Account Number is either a 15 or 16 digit number. The first six digits of a Visa™ or MasterCard™ Primary Account Number identifies the card issuer banking institution 1300 and is known as the “Bank Identification Number” or “BIN.” In some embodiments, such as debit transactions, the authorization request may also contain a user verification identifier, such as the customer's personal identification number (PIN) or biometric information.
At decision block 2004, fraud prevention engine 2110 determines whether the customer exclusive data 4000 associated with the primary account number needs to be updated. An update may occur, for example, because the new customer exclusive data 4000 exists as issuer 1300 receives new information from the payment device user.
The associated customer exclusive data 4000 is retrieved from the cardholder database 2310, block 8006, and stored at the payment device 100, block 8008.
At block 8002, customer data manager 2116 queries cardholder database 2310 to see if any customer exclusive data 4000 associated with wireless payment device 100c needs updating. The associated customer exclusive data 4000 is retrieved from the cardholder database 2310, block 9004, and is transmitted to the payment device 100c via mobile telephony interface 2400, block 9006.
If at decision block 9008 a “receive storage confirmation” is received from the payment device 100c, process 7000 ends. Otherwise, process flow returns to block 9006.
The previous description of the embodiments is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the invention. The various modifications to these embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments without the use of inventive faculty. Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown herein, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and novel features disclosed herein.
