Registers – Records – Magnetic
Patent
1996-07-11
1998-11-10
Pitts, Harold
Registers
Records
Magnetic
235492, G06K 1906
Patent
active
058347577
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
I. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns the debiting of credit information contained on disposable inductive debit cards used as payment elements on public telephone sets as described in patent application BR 9201380. More specifically, it concerns the order in which the credit cells are erased so as to eliminate any fraud attempts.
The invention consists of an improvement of the collection method proposed in application BR 9304503 (International Publication No. WO 96/35188), and is designed to avoid any accidental invalidation of the card through inadvertent misuse during the credit collection operation.
II. Background Information
The method decribed in said document is based on the division of the cards in sectors where all the credit cells of a particular sector are to be burnt out in a pseudo-random fashion before the process begins to burn out cells of another sector. In a preferred embodimenent of the invention, the cell and sector burning out order is permanently stored in the memory of the read/write head which processes the card in the following sequence:
on starting up the operation, the red/write device determines in which of the four possible positions the card was inserted;
next the valid and the used up credits are mapped by comparing them with the burn out order stored in the memory of the device;
if the burnt out and the valid cells are in agreement with the order stored in the memory of the device, the card will be accepted as valid; if there are burnt out or valid cells not meeting the stored order, the card will be considered as fraudulent and will be rejected.
The proper working of the method in question supposes that the user does not move the card, after having inserted it, before the end of the transaction. However, unexperienced or unskilled users may withdraw the card as soon as the control circuit of the red/write head has ordered the debiting of a credit; due to the delay between this order and the effective application of the erasing current to the specific sensor coil, the displacement of the card during this time may cause the cell located under said coil to be a different one from the cell which should be burnt out according to the erasure order stored in the device's memory. Consequently, there will be both a burnt out and a valid cell out of order on the card, resulting In the rejection of the card when the user attempts to use it again, since It will be considered as frauded.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
From the foregoing, the present invention alms to provide a credit debiting method which prevents any accidental cell erasure which would invalidate the debit card.
A further aim of the invention is to detect any fraudulent card upon insertion in the read/write head, commanding its immediate rejection.
The above mentioned aims, as well as others, are accomplished by the invention by dividing the card in sectors forming longitudinal columns, having the width of one cell. The first transverse edge is considered to be the one inserted in the read/write device and the second transverse edge the one remaining outside in order to allow the user to handle the card. The erasure of the credit cells proceeds by starting from the valid cell nearest the said first edge and continuing in the direction of said second edge.
According to another characteristic of the invention, an order is set for the debiting of the columns where all cells of a column are to be erased before going on to the next column, said debiting order being stored in the read/write device.
According to another characteristic of the invention, any card bearing more than one column with just one valid credit in it will be considered as frauded.
The previous characteristics, as well as other aspects and advantages of the present invention, will become more evident from the description of an embodiment of it, taken as an example and not in a limiting sense, as shown by the attached drawings in which:
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 shows an inductive debit card ha
REFERENCES:
patent: 4029945 (1977-06-01), Yamada et al.
patent: 5625791 (1997-04-01), Rarrugia et al.
Fernandes Rubens Ramos
Nishikawa Antonio Massao
Pitts Harold
Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras S/A - Telebras
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