WO2001099020A1

WO2001099020A1 - System and method for automated mediation of vendor accounts

Info

Publication number: WO2001099020A1
Application number: PCT/US2001/020105
Authority: WO
Inventors: John P. Shannon; Peter Cellarius; Claude C. Bouffard
Original assignee: Gopin Inc
Priority date: 2000-06-22
Filing date: 2001-06-22
Publication date: 2001-12-27
Also published as: AU2001271415A1

Abstract

A system and method for managing incentive accounts comprising a transaction server (106) for managing client (102) and vendor (104a...104n) relationships and researching incentive programs stored in an authentication database (106).

Description

_SYSTEM _{AND M}ETHOD FOR AUTOMATED MEDIATION OF VENDOR ACCOUNTS

Field of the. Invention •

The invention relates to the • field of electronic

commerce, and more particularly to an engine for the automated

exchange of value between different stored value cards and

other special-purpose vendor accounts.

Background of the Invention,

Recent years have seen the widespread use of incentive

marketing techniques for various goods and services, including

account or account-like reward programs such as frequent flyer

miles programs for airlines. These marketing programs may be

conducted for affinity, branding, consumer incentive, market

research and other purposes. Many of these advanced marketing

techniques take the form of stored value or prepaid

transaction-oriented accounts, such as the long-distance

telephone minutes, bonus gasoline and other incentives or

purchase units. While many consumers appreciate and take advantage of the

convenience of these cashless stored value accounts, very few

if any of these rewards programs are ubiquitously available,

for example for reuse or conversion on -the Internet.

Therefore these rewards and other incentive programs are

often not fully utilized by the consumers entitled to their

use, in part because the consumers are locked into applying

the stored valued to transactions with individual vendors.

Those vendors may not be located within a geographic area

which is convenient to the consumer, reducing the chances of

redemption of those accounts. Or the value represented by i those accounts may only be eligible for the purchase of

defined categories of goods or services, which the consumer

may or may not have an immediate interest in.

The limited nature of stored value accounts is also a

disadvantage for many merchants and vendors. For instance, an

Australian airline which promotes travel packages using

frequent flyer mile accounts may find it difficult to attract

and fulfill trip contracts and other arrangements with, say, a

Canadian purchaser.^'

Even if the travel offer is accepted, if the passenger

reneges, unwinding and settling such a failed or incomplete

transaction is not practical to the distant vendor, who would

-have to seek a recovery remotely in a foreign judicial system or otherwise. More universal and reliable reward marketing

technology is desirable.

Summary of the Invention

The invention overcoming these and other problems in

the art relates to a system and method for automated

mediation . of vendor or other ecommerce accounts, in which a

network transaction engine is employed, to recognize, exchange

and mediate stored valued and other accounts offered by

individual vendors and held by consumers or others .

According to the invention, consumers may store, convert

and barter their accumulated vendor accounts with other

consumers or businesses, exchanging the value contained in

those financial objects across geographic and currency

boundaries. Disputed transactions may be remedied at the

level of the exchange engine operator, without a need to

invoke ^"a foreign judicial system. The utilization of stored

value accounts' via the syndication of the invention may

therefore be increased, to the convenience of both .consumers

and vendors .

Brief Description of the Drawings The. invention will be described with reference to the

accompanying drawings, in which like elements are referenced

with like numerals.

Figure 1 illustrates an overall architecture for

transaction processing according to the invention.

Figure 2. illustrates a mediation action of a transaction

server according to the invention.

Figure 3 illustrates a flowchart of transaction

processing according to the invention.

Figure 4 illustrates an overall architecture for

transaction processing according to the invention in another

regard.

Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments

As illustrated in Figure 1, in the overall architecture

for stored value exchange according to the invention, a

customer or consumer operating an Internet or other client 102

communicates via communication link 114 to any one or more of

a group .of vendors 104a, 104b, ...104n (n arbitrary) . The

client 102 may be or include, for instance, a personal

computer running the Microsoft Windows™ 95, 98, Millenium™,

NT™, or 2000, Windows™CE™, PalmOS™, Unix, Linux, Solaris ™,

OS/2 ™, BeOS ™, MacOS ™ or other operating system or platform.

The. client 102 may also be or include a network-enabled appliance such as a WebTV™ unit, radio-enabled Palm™ Pilot or

similar unit, a set-top box, a networkable game-playing

console such as Sony Playstation™ or Sega Dreamcast™, a

browser-equipped cellular telephone, or other TCP/IP client or

other device.

The communication link 114 to which the client 102

connects may be, include or interface to any one or more of,

for instance, the Internet, an intranet, a PAN (Personal Area

Network) , a LAN (Local Area Network) , a WAN (Wide Area

Network) or a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) , a frame relay

connection, an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) connection,

a synchronous optical network (SONET) connection, a digital

Tl, T3 or El line, Digital Data Service (DDS) connection, DSL

(Digital Subscriber Line) connection, an Ethernet connection,

an ISDN (Integrated Services . Digital Network) line, a dial-up

port such as a V.90, V.34 or V.34bis analog modem connection,

a cable modem, an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) connection,

or FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) or CDDI (Copper

Distrib.ut.ed Data Interface) connections. The communications

link 114 may furthermore be, include or interface to any one

or more of a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) link, a GPRS

(General Packet Radio Service) link, a GSM (Global System for

Mobile Communication) link, a CDMA (Code Division Multiple

Access) or TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) link such- as a cellular phone channel, a GPS (Global Positioning System)

link, CDPD (cellular digital packet data) , a RIM (Research in

Motion, Limited) duplex paging type device, a Bluetooth radio

link, or an IEEE 802.11-based radio frequency link.

Communications link 114 may yet further be, include or

interface to any one or more of an RS-232 serial connection,

an IEEE-1394 (Firewire) connection, an IrDA (infrared) port, a SCSI (Small Computer Serial Interface) connection, a USB

(Universal Serial Bus) connection or other wired or wireless,

digital or analog interface or connection. Other illustrated

communications links may include the same types of resources.

Thus in the operation of the invention, a one or more of

a group of the vendors 104a, 104b,...104n may offer a variety of

consumer reward, incentive or other promotional accounts, such

as frequent flyer miles programs, rebate or refund programs,

long distance minutes programs, gasoline purchase card points,

gift certificate, retail merchant purchase amounts, or any

other of a variety of stored value, bonus, reward, purchase or

other accounts. In general the accounts offered by each of

the vendors 104a, ' 104b, ...104n may be for different types of

goods or services offered by that vendor, may originate from

or applicable to a variety of geographic regions or countries,

and may be designated in a variety of currencies or other units, not necessarily local to or easily used by the

consumer.

The invention however operates to separate the economic^'

value stored in any of a collection of stored value accounts

126a, 126b, ... 126n (arbitrary) held by individual consumers or

others from their individual issuers for broader use. In

particular, as illustrated in Figure 2, individual consumers

may register with a transaction server 106 communicating with

the vendors 104a, 104b, ...104n over communications link 116, to

permit the valuation and exchange of the various programs,

points, miles and other -account values to which they are

entitled.

The transaction server 106 may be or • include, for

instance, a ^'workstation running the Microsoft Windows™

NT™, .Windows™ 2000, Unix, Linux, Xenix, IBM AIX, Hewlett -

Packard UX, Novell Netware™, Sun Microsystems Solaris™,

OS/2™,. BeOS™, .Mach, Apache, OpenStep™ or other operating

system or platform. The transaction server 106 may

generate, maintain and validate individual consumers in a

authentication database 110, in which identifying information

such as name, password, ID and other information may. be stored

for persons wishing to participate in or subscribe to the

mediated value market promoted by the invention. The authentication database 110 may be, include or

interface to, for example, line information database (LIDB) -

type resources operating according to the SS7 signaling

standard and accessible over the public telecommunications

network, as understood by persons skilled in the art. The

authentication database 110 may likewise be, include or

interface to resources such as the ATT Corp. Billing

Validation Application (BVA) or the U.S. West Business

Validation Service (BVS) , or others. The authentication

database 110 may further be, include or interface to the

Oracle™ relational database sold commercially by Oracle Corp.

Other databases, such as Informix™, DB2 (Database 2) or other

data storage or query formats or platforms such as OLAP (On

Line Analytical Processing) , SQL (Standard Query Language) ,

Microsoft Access™ or others may also be used, incorporated or

accessed in the invention.

The transaction server 106 may, for instance, permit

individual subscribers to search for types of transactions of

interest .to them which may be paid for with stored value for

that or another vendor, directly or translated from another

rewards program registered for brokering according to the

invention. Thus a consumer may wish to investigate the

purchase of airfare using frequent flyer miles or other stored value to a destination the consumer is considering for

vacation or other purposes.

Upon receipt of an inquiry against authentication

database 110, the transaction server 106 may search and detect

that participating vendors may accept accounts representing

value for the particular type of good or • service searched on,

and communicate the results to the consumer making the

inquiry. The transaction server 106 may do so in an anonymous

fashion, and provide authentication services to the

subscribers during exchange and other transaction stages

carried out according to the invention.

Linkages may also be established between businesses,

consumers and others holding different types of accounts.

Thus, for example, a variety of transactions may be performed

according to the invention, including consumer-to-consumer

transactions in which one consumer stored value account 126a

is debited upon an authorized exchange with the second

consumer stored value account 126b, whose value is increased

in at ..an. exchange rate determined by the parties or by

reference to an external source .

Thus a consumer desiring to purchase airfare to a

particular destination may effect the transaction by

exchanging an amount of a different stored value account they

may hold, such as a long distance telephone card, with a frequent flyer account of another subscriber willing to make

that exchange .

Or the consumer wishing to ^' make that purchase may find

that a given airline or other travel vendor is willing to

accept payment in other stored value units such as long

distance telephone minutes, because that vendor may in turn

barter or convert that value according to -the invention at a

later time.

The invention thus enhances frictionless commerce for all

parties concerned, including between different vendors 104a,

104b,...104n in different locations or different currencies by

permitting them to accept - different types of stored value in

payment for their services, even if the stored value accounts

being presented payment are not ones originally issued by them

or are not related to their locale.

Thus, for instance, in another example of a consumer-to-

vendor transaction according to the invention, one or more of

the vendors 104a, 104b, ...104n may solicit or be contacted by a

consumer .wishing to purchase, say, automobile parts in a given

geographic area, but that consumer does not hold an account

with that merchandise vendor.

The consumer may then initiate a transaction using

transaction server 106 which presents other stored • value

accounts to the transaction server 106, which _. the transaction server 106 validates against the authentication database 110.

The stored account balance on that account may be converted

into an appropriate currency format for the desired local

transaction using currency database 130. The currency

database 130 may be loaded with data from the International

Monetary Fund ■ (IMF) or other governmental or commercial

sources to mediate translations between accounts.

The vendor or vendors 104a 104b ... 104n may then receive

payment in their local currency or in their specific stored

value account, while the different, converted stored value

account belonging to the purchasing consumer may be debited in.

authentication database 110 accordingly. Delays or

authentication routines may be applied against transactions on

a selective or continuous basis, to guard against transaction

fraud such as kiting or laundering between invalid accounts. •

Because the exchange^' of stored value according to the

invention may proceed at distant locations, electronic

commerce is enhanced, and the need for particular use of

individual currencies may often be eliminated. The brokering

effect of the mediation engine of the invention frees

consumers to use stored value across a broader spectrum of

purchase activity, while localizing the reconciliation of

accounts and other support services in the transaction server

106. Moreover, if desired the invention may be configured to

maintain anonymity in whole or part for transactions carried

out according to the transaction engine described, by use of

encryption, public key, third party validation or ^' other

techniques. The invention imparts a more cash-like quality to

stored value or other debit accounts, since the value is

liberated from the level of individual merchants or programs

to be used across different types of goods and services.

In another embodiment of the invention, the transaction

server 106 may be configured to permit selective overdraft

against one or more of the stored value accounts 126a, 126b ...

126n according to criteria established by one or more of the

individual vendors 104a, 104b ... 104n or otherwise. Individual

ones of the stored value accounts 126a, 126b ... 126n may

likewise be used to back or collateralize other accounts.

Receipt, on-line confirmations and other reporting and

reconciliation functions may also be provided or initiated by

the transaction server 106.-

Overall processing according to the invention will be

described in another respect with reference to Figure 3. In

step 302,^' processing begins. In step 304, one or more

^■ consumers establish accounts via transaction server 106 to

record individual stored alue accounts 126a, 126b ... 126n. I

step 306, one or more individual vendors 104a 104b ... 104n may establish a registration with transaction server 106. In step

308, a consumer may initiate a transaction, such as. for the

purchase for goods or services via the Internet.

In step 310, the consumer's account may be validated

against the authentication database 110 or other resources by

the transaction server 106. In step 312, the consumer

completes a purchasing action, such as by clicking on a "buy"

button on the vendor's Web page. In step 314, a total

transaction amount may be calculated. In step 316, the

consumer may indicate that one or more stored value accounts

belonging to that consumer are to be presented in payment for

the pending transaction. In step 318, the transaction- server

may interrogate the authentication database 110 to ensure

adequacy of the consumer's accounts for consummation of the

transaction.

In step 320, the transaction server 106 may access

currency database 130 as necessary for currency conversion.

In step 322, the vendor may be presented with a validated

transac.ti.on completion signal, allowing the transaction to

close. In step 324, the vendor's account within

authentication database 110 may be credited according to the

amount exchanged, or payment may be directed to the merchant

in another .manner. In step 326, receipts or confirmations may be generated for transmission to both consumer and merchant,

in step 328, processing ends.

An overall architecture according to the invention in

another regard is illustrated in Figure 4, in which the

interconnection of the transaction server 106, a telephony

engine 108 such as the Nortel Networks DMS™ platform for

metering, billing or other associated services, the vendor

transaction site or sites such as Web pages or other portals,

the client and other aspects are shown.

In general, according to the overall architecture in

which the invention in one embodiment may operate, consumers

may initiate and execute transactions over a dial-up,

broadband or other .Internet or other network connections,

which . transactions may be monitored and mediated via

transaction server 106, telephony engine 108 along with

attendant database, communications and other resources. The

messaging traffic between the consumer and the vendor, and

between the vendor and the authentication resources, again may

be of a. partial, anonymous and/or secure nature.

This is at least in part because the invention does not

demand the transmission of complete identity or account

information, whether in the clear, encrypted or otherwise, at

any one stage of the transaction process. Rather, a subset of

selected attributes, fields or keywords may be queried between the consumer ^" and the commercial vendor for the separate

transmission to the party, company or other organization

operating the transaction server 106, telephony engine 108 or

authentication database 110, and only the party providing the

authentication function necessarily records more complete

information in order to carry out that task. As shown in that

figure and described above, billing against the consumer's

account, telephone bill or otherwise may be triggered by a

validated authentication sequence whose details may never be

communicated to the vendor. The vendor may consequently

receive payment directly ^* or indirectly from banks or other

financial intermediaries separately after that process, with

whom the- consumer separately reconciles. Transaction privacy

and flexibility for consumers are therefore enhanced.

The foregoing description of the system and method of the

invention is illustrative, and variations in configuration and

implementation will occur to persons skilled in the art. For

instance, while the invention has been described with respect

to individual consumers applying stored valued accounts to

vendors to effect^' online or other transactions, consumers

could also pool their accounts for aggregate transactions, or

the transactions may involve three or more parties.

Moreover, while the points, miles, or other units of

value stored within the stored value accounts 126a, 126b ... 126n have been described as generally fixed, it is possible

that the value of different miles, telephone minutes, rewards

points and other units may float freely including in exchange

markets between participating consumers on transaction server

106 and other media.

Furthermore, certain resources such as computing, data,

communications or other resources illustrated as singular or

standalone may be distributed, . and one or more separate

resources may be combined. Moreover, while the invention has

been generally been described with respect to purchase

transactions involving the^* debiting of the consumer's account,

in another embodiment steps of the transaction processing may

be executed in reverse manner to recharge, refund or otherwise

credit the consumer's account.

Likewise, companies, organizations or other parties

operating or supervising different segments of the processing

chain could be one in the same, so for example authentication

entities could also own or operate the transaction engine or

engines.,. .or other resources. The scope of the invention is

accordingly intended to be limited only by the following

claims.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A system for conducting electronic commerce, comprising: a first interface to a subscriber database, the subscriber database recording at least one stored value account for each of a plurality of subscribers; and a second interface to a transaction site, communicating with the first interface, the second interface operative- to communicate with at least one network-enabled vendor to permit the execution of a transaction based ύn the at least one stored value account .

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a transaction server, communicating with the first interface and the second interface, the transaction server managing the execution of the transaction by accessing the at least one stored value account.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the second interface comprises a network-enabled connection.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the network-enabled connection comprises a connection to the Internet.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the transaction site comprises a. Web page.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one stored value account information comprises at least one of a telephone calling card account, a frequent flyer account, a gasoline purchase _. account, a rebate account, a gift certificate account, and a retail merchant account.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one stored value account comprises a plurality - of stored value accounts for at least one subscriber who is^' party to the transaction.

8. The system of claim 2, wherein the transaction server converts values between at least a first stored value account and a second stored value account to effect the transaction.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the first stored value account and the second stored value account belong to a consumer who is party to the transaction.

10. The system of claim 2, wherein the transaction server executes a translation between a first currency and a second currency to effect the transaction.

11. A method for conducting , electronic commerce, comprising: a) recording at least one stored value account for each of a plurality of subscribers in a subscriber database; and b) communicating with at least one network-enabled vendor via a transaction site to execute a transaction based on the at least one stored value account .

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising a step of

(c) managing the execution of the transaction via a transaction server.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the step (b) of communicating comprises second interface comprises communicating via a -network-enabled connection.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the network-enabled connection comprises a connection to the Internet .

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the transaction site comprises a Web page.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the at least one stored value account information comprises at least one of a telephone calling card account, a frequent flyer account, a gasoline purchase account, a rebate account, a gift certificate account, and a retail merchant account.

17. The 'method of claim 12, wherein the at least one stored value account comprises a plurality of stored value accounts for at least one subscriber who is party to the transaction.

18. The method of claim 17,- further comprising a step of (d) converting values between at least a first stored value account and a second stored value account to effect the transaction.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the first stored value account and the second stored value account belong to a consumer who is party to the transaction.

20. The system of claim 12, wherein the step (d) of converting comprises a step of (e) translation between a first currency and a second currency.