US 2018/0121912 A1Published application

S&M to locate vending machines, select on-screen, and click to buy

OwnerFernando Moralesinventor

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Abstract

The present invention teaches a cashless way to purchase products or services from offline Vending Machines VM in which the seller receives an electronic transfer of funds before the machine dispenses the purchased products. Using one copy of the WordPress software for each offline VM the sellers can receive payments directly into their PayPal accounts. Buyers can pay using their credit cards or PayPal account. Buyers using Google Maps can locate the nearby machines and the web site associated to them, so that they can purchase products walking to the desired machine. When buyers get close to the VM a special message created and sent by its Smart Cellular Phone SCP commands the VM to dispense the purchased product. The special message contains synchronized time information to protect against message cloning to obtain products without paying.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A mobile-device-to-machine payment system for facilitating a cashless transaction for purchase of at least one product or service by a user from a payment accepting unit with or without input mechanisms, the user having a mobile device having both short-range communication technology and long-range communication technology, the payment accepting unit capable of dispensing at least one product or service, said system comprising:

(a) an adapter module associated with the payment accepting unit, said adapter having short-range communication technology for communicating with the short-range communication technology of the mobile device;
(b) that mobile device contains data or gathers it from a cloud stored data using a long-range communication technology to select a product offered by said payment accepting unit;
(c) that mobile device paid for the selected product by subtracting from an internal balance or using the long-range communication technology deducts and adds to balances located in the cloud storage or process the payment using a payment service provider;
(d) that mobile device using internal data or cloud stored data or emailed data creates and communicates a message to the adapter module associated with the said payment accepting unit using the short-range communication technology;
and (e) said adapter module for receiving said message using short-range communication technology, wherein the payment accepting unit dispenses the at least one product or service in response to receiving user input if required to the payment accepting unit if said adapter module has received said message.

2 more elements

A method for using a mobile-device-to-machine payment system for facilitating a cashless transaction for purchase of at least one product or service by a user from a payment accepting unit with or without input mechanism, the user having a mobile device having both short-range communication technology and long-range communication technology, the payment accepting unit capable of dispensing at least one product or service, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) using device internal data or gathering cloud stored data using the long-range communication technology of the mobile device to select a product from the paying accepting unit;
(b) paying said product selected by deducting from the device internal balance or by using an electronic payment service provider or by modifying cloud stored data using the long-range communication technology of the mobile device;
(c) creating a message using device data or cloud storage data or emailed data and communicating said message to the adapter module associated to the payment accepting unit using the mobile device and the short-range communication technology of the mobile device;
(d) receiving said message from the short-range communication technology of said mobile device at said adapter module associated with the payment accepting unit, and (e) dispensing the at least one product or service from the payment accepting unit in response to receiving user input if required to the payment accepting unit if said adapter module has received said message.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.