Card data output for cardless transactions
AssigneeSquare, Inc.
InventorRobert Lee
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed are method and apparatus that enable a cardless payment transaction to be executed from a merchant point-of-sale (POS) system. A user is enabled to check in at a merchant by using a mobile device of the user and then to pay by simply appearing at the merchant and mentioning his name. By emulating card read events and intercepting receipt printer outputs, the technique cleanly integrates into a conventional merchant POS system, without the need for customized software or hardware to accommodate individual POS vendor-proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs).
Claims21
A method comprising:
- detecting, by a transaction-initiating software module executing on a point-of-sale (POS) device of a merchant registered with a cardless payment service system, an indication of an intent to initiate a payment transaction at the POS device between the merchant and a customer registered with the cardless payment service system;
- sending, by the transaction-initiating software module and to one or more servers associated with the cardless payment service system, a request for a financial account number for a financial account of the customer;
- receiving, by the transaction-initiating software module and from the one or more servers associated with the cardless payment service system, the financial account number, the financial account number having been stored by the one or more servers associated with the cardless payment service system when the customer registered with the cardless payment service system and prior to the payment transaction;
- and
- initiating, by the transaction-initiating software module and at least partly in response to receiving the financial account number, the payment transaction by outputting, from the transaction-initiating software module to a POS application executing on the POS device, payment authorization request data including or based at least in part on the financial account number.
One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform actions comprising:
- detecting, via a transaction-initiating software module executing on a point-of-sale (POS) device of a merchant registered with a cardless payment service system, an indication of an intent to initiate a payment transaction, at the POS device, between the merchant and a customer registered with the cardless payment service system;
- sending, by the transaction-initiating software module and to one or more servers of the cardless payment service system, a request for a financial account number for a financial account of the customer;
- receiving, via the transaction-initiating software and from the one or more servers of the cardless payment service system, the financial account number, the financial account number having been stored by the one or more servers of the cardless payment service system when the customer registered with the cardless payment service system and prior to the payment transaction;
- and
- initiating, at least partly in response to receiving the financial account number, the payment transaction by outputting, from the transaction-initiating software and to a POS application executing on the POS device, payment authorization request data including or based at least in part on the financial account number.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.