Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Network-to-computer interfacing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-17
2001-10-16
Maung, Zarni (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Network-to-computer interfacing
C709S230000, C709S217000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06304915
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the secure, electronic payment in exchange for goods and services purchased over a communication network, and more specifically, to a system, method and article of manufacture for securely transmitting payment information from a customer to a merchant to a payment gateway and returning a certification, including a credit confidence factor to allow a merchant to determine whether to accept or reject payment information utilizing a flexible, extensible architecture.
The present invention relates to an electronic graphical representation of a monetary system for implementing electronic money payments as an alternative medium of economic exchange to cash, checks, credit and debit cards, and electronic funds transfer. The Electronic-Monetary System is a hybrid of currency, check, card payment systems, and electronic funds transfer systems, possessing many of the benefits of these systems with few of their limitations. The system utilizes electronic representations of money which are designed to be universally accepted and exchanged as economic value by subscribers of the monetary system.
Today, approximately 350 billion coin and currency transactions occur between individuals and institutions every year. The extensive use of coin and currency transactions has limited the automation of individual transactions such as purchases, fares, and bank account deposits and withdrawals. Individual cam transactions are burdened by the need to have the correct amount of cash or providing change therefor. Furthermore, the handling and managing of paper cash and coins is inconvenient, costly and time consuming for both individuals and financial institutions.
Although checks may be written for any specific amount up to the amount available in the account, checks have very limited transferability and must be supplied from a physical inventory. Paper-based checking systems do not offer sufficient relief from the limitations of cash transactions, sharing many of the inconveniences of handling currency while adding the inherent delays associated with processing checks. To this end, economic exchange has striven for greater convenience at a lower cost, while also seeking improved security.
Automation has achieved some of these qualities for large transactions through computerized electronic funds transfer (“EFT”) systems. Electronic funds transfer is essentially a process of value exchange achieved through the banking system's centralized computer transactions. EFT services are a transfer of payments utilizing electronic “checks,” which are used primarily by large commercial organizations.
The Clearing House (ACH) where a user can enter a pre-authorized code and download information with billing occurring later, and a Point Of Sale (POS) system where a transaction is processed by connecting with a central computer for authorization for the transaction granted or denied immediately are examples of EFT systems that are utilized by retail and commercial organizations. However, the payments made through these types of EFT systems are limited in that they cannot be performed without the banking system. Moreover, ACH transactions usually cannot be performed during off business hours.
Home Banking bill payment services are examples of an EFT system used by individuals to make payments from a home computer. Currently, home banking initiatives have found few customers. Of the banks that have offered services for payments, account transfers and information over the telephone lines using personal computers, less than one percent of the bank's customers are using the service. One reason that Home Banking has not been a successful product is because the customer cannot deposit and withdraw money as needed in this type of system.
Current EFT systems, credit cards, or debit cards, which are used in conjunction with an on-line system to transfer money between accounts, such as between the account of a merchant and that of a customer, cannot satisfy the need for an automated transaction system providing an ergonomic interface. Examples of EFT systems which provide non-ergonomic interfaces are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,476,259; 5,459,304; 5,452,352; 5,448,045; 5,478,993; 5,455,407; 5,453,601; 5,465,291; and 5,485,510.
To implement an automated, convenient transaction that can dispense some form of economic value, there has been a trend towards off-line payments. For example, numerous ideas have been proposed for some form of “electronic money” that can be used in cashless payment transactions as alternatives to the traditional currency and check types of payment systems. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,595, entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPLEMENTING ELECTRONIC CASH,” and U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,059, entitled “MODULAR FUNDS TRANSFER SYSTEM.”
The more well known techniques include magnetic stripe cards purchased for a given amount and from which a prepaid value can be deducted for specific purposes. Upon exhaustion of the economic value, the cards are thrown away. Other examples include memory cards or so called smart cards which are capable of repetitively storing information representing value that is likewise deducted for specific purposes.
It is desirable for a computer operated under the control of a merchant to obtain information offered by a customer and transmitted by a computer operating under the control of the customer over a publicly accessible packet-switched network (e.g., the Internet) to the computer operating under the control of the merchant, without risking the exposure of the information to interception by third parties that have access to the network, and to assure that the information is from an authentic source. It is further desirable for the merchant to transmit information, including a subset of the information provided by the customer, over such a network to a payment gateway computer system that is designated, by a bank or other financial institution that has the responsibility of providing payment on behalf of the customer, to authorize a commercial transaction on behalf of such a financial institution, without the risk of exposing that information to interception by third parties. Such institutions include, for example, financial institutions offering credit or debit card services.
One such attempt to provide such a secure transmission channel is a secure payment technology such as Secure Electronic Transaction (hereinafter “SET”), jointly developed by the Visa and MasterCard card associations, and described in Visa and MasterCard's
Secure Electronic Transaction
(
SET
)
Specification,
Feb. 23, 1996, hereby incorporated by reference. Other such secure payment technologies include Secure Transaction Technology (“STT”), Secure Electronic Payments Protocol (“SEPP”), Internet Keyed Payments (“iKP”), Net Trust, and Cybercash Credit Payment Protocol. One of ordinary skill in the art readily comprehends that any of the secure payment technologies can be substituted for the SET protocol without undue experimentation. Such secure payment technologies require the customer to operate software that is compliant with the secure payment technology, interacting with third-party certification authorities, thereby allowing the customer to transmit encoded information to a merchant, some of which may be decoded by the merchant, and some which can be decoded only by a payment gateway specified by the customer.
Another such attempt to provide such a secure transmission channel is a general-purpose secure communication protocol such as Netscape, Inc.'s Secure Sockets Layer (hereinafter “SSL”), as described in Freier, Karlton & Kocher (hereinafter “Freier”),
The SSL Protocol Version
3.0, March 1996, and hereby incorporated by reference. SSL provides a means for secure transmission between two computers. SSL has the advantage that it does not require special-purpose software to be installed on the customer's computer because it is already incorporated into widely available software that many people utilize as their standard Internet
Haller Daniel R.
Nguyen Trong
Subramanian Mahadevan P.
Hewlett--Packard Company
Maung Zarni
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