Customer voice order triggered mutual affinity merchant donation
AssigneeEdatanetworks Inc.
InventorTerrance Patrick TIETZEN
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A customer uses a mobile device to verbally request an offer that includes an incentive to transact at a merchant's brick and mortar store in the customer's local community in exchange for the merchant's agreement to make an auditable donation to a charity serving the local community. Business rules limit the merchant's charitable donations over calendar periods, which donations can be made directly by the merchant to the community charity, or indirectly to the charity by way of a blind donation made by the merchant to a donation disbursement agency acting on the merchant's behalf to satisfy the merchant's commitment to donate.
Claims20
For enabling a loyalty program to be operable via the Internet to engage in real time data communications with one of more account issuers respectively issuing accounts to account holders and one or more merchant acquirers respectively issuing accounts to merchants, the method further enabling the loyalty program to be linked to the one or more account issuers, and thereby their account holders, by operation of a loyalty system, the loyalty system being operable to enable the creation, implementation and management of one or more loyalty programs that provide benefits to members of the loyalty programs in connection with transactions between the account holders and one or more merchants associated with the loyalty system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more account issuers of an account issuer system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more merchant acquirers of a merchant acquirer system associated with the one or more account issuers, wherein there are registered a plurality of the account holders as members of the loyalty program, wherein the operator of the loyalty system, the one or more account issuers, and the merchants establish rules for accrual and processing of benefits from the merchants to the account holders associated with the one or more account issuers in connection with transactions between the account holders and the merchants with the loyalty system, a method comprising a plurality of steps that include:
- receiving an account holder identifier and digitized audio data containing a request for an offer from a merchant to account holders to make a purchase from the merchant in exchange for the merchant making a donation to a charity;
- deriving the request from the digitized audio data;
- using the derived request to access and retrieve offers each being from a merchant to account holders to make a purchase from the merchant in exchange for the merchant making a donation to a charity;
- converting each said retrieved offer into a digitized audio file;
- transmitting the digitized audio file to the transmitter;
- receiving, in response to the transmitted digitized audio file, a digitized audio data containing a selected one said retrieved offer;
- deriving the selected one said retrieved offer from the digitized audio data;
- receiving acknowledgement of:
- an authorization request for a transaction between the account holder and the merchant making the selected one said retrieved offer;
- and
- an authorization response to the authorization request sent from the account issuer corresponding to the account holder to the merchant acquirer corresponding to the merchant;
- and
- for each said transaction for which the authorization response includes an indicator that the transaction has been authorized by the account issuer corresponding to the account holder, transmitting a message containing the donation to be made to the charity by the merchant making the selected one said retrieved offer.
The method as defined in claim 8, wherein the steps further comprise:
- receiving information derived from the authorization response which includes an indicator that the transaction has been authorized by the account issuer corresponding to the account holder, and for which the transaction and including the date and the time, a currency amount, and identifiers for the merchant and the account holder;
- and
- for each said transaction for which:
- the identifiers in the authorization response for the merchant and the account holder respectively correspond to the identifiers of the account holder and the one said merchant in the third set data;
- and
- the date and time of the corresponding said authorization response are prior to an expiration date of the offer by the one said merchant in the third set data to make the donation to the charity having the physical address in the residential community of the account holder:
- using the identifier for the one said merchant in the third set data to access a database to retrieve a business rule for making the donation to the charity having the physical address in the residential community of the account holder;
- using the identifier for the account holder to retrieve a business rule for the merchant to make the donation to the charity;
- deriving, using the business rules of the merchant in the third set and the account holder, the donation to the charity;
- and
- transmitting a message containing the donation to be made by the merchant.
For enabling a loyalty program to be operable via the Internet to engage in real time data communications with one of more account issuers respectively issuing accounts to account holders and one or more merchant acquirers respectively issuing accounts to merchants, the method further enabling the loyalty program to be linked to the one or more account issuers, and thereby their account holders, by operation of a loyalty system, the loyalty system being operable to enable the creation, implementation and management of one or more loyalty programs that provide benefits to members of the loyalty programs in connection with transactions between the account holders and one or more merchants associated with the loyalty system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more account issuers of an account issuer system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more merchant acquirers of a merchant acquirer system associated with the one or more account issuers, wherein there are registered a plurality of the account holders as members of the loyalty program, wherein the operator of the loyalty system, the one or more account issuers, and the merchants establish rules for accrual and processing of benefits from the merchants to the account holders associated with the one or more account issuers in connection with transactions between the account holders and the merchants with the loyalty system, and a method comprising a plurality of steps that include:
- receiving a transmission that includes:
- digitized audio data containing a keyword of a request;
- an identifier for the geo-location of a transmitter of the transmission;
- and
- an account number for an account holder;
- performing a speech-to-text conversion on the digitized audio data to derive identifier for the keyword of the request;
- accessing one or more databases, using the identifier, the account number of the account holder, and the geo-location of the transmitter of the transmission to look-up information corresponding to:
- a geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- a first set of merchants having a physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- a second set of said merchants in the first set having an attribute matching the identifier for the keyword;
- a third set of said merchants in the second set having an unexpired offer to make a donation to an affinity entity having a physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- and
- for each said merchant in the third set:
- calculating navigation data using the identifier for the geo-location of the transmitter of the transmission and the physical address of the merchant;
- performing a text-to-speech conversion into digitized audio data of:
- a name of the merchant;
- and
- the navigation data;
- transmitting the digitized audio data for the third set of merchants for delivery to the transmitter;
- receiving, in response to the transmission of the digitized audio data, digitized audio input that includes an identifier for one said merchants in the third set;
- performing a speech-to-text conversion on the digitized audio data to derive the identifier for the one said merchant in the third set;
- transmitting to a logical address for the one said merchant in the third set data selected from the group consisting of:
- an identifier for the account holder;
- the corresponding said calculated navigation data;
- and
- the corresponding said unexpired offer to make the donation to the affinity entity having the physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- receiving acknowledgement of:
- an authorization request for a transaction between the account holder and the one said merchant in the third set;
- and
- an authorization response to the authorization request sent from the account issuer corresponding to the account holder to the merchant acquirer corresponding to the one said merchant in the third set;
- and
- for each said transaction for which the authorization response includes an indicator that the transaction has been authorized by the account issuer corresponding to the account holder, transmitting a message containing the donation to be made to the donation to the affinity entity having the physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder.
For enabling a loyalty program to be operable via the Internet to engage in real time data communications with one of more account issuers respectively issuing accounts to account holders and one or more merchant acquirers respectively issuing accounts to merchants, the method further enabling the loyalty program to be linked to the one or more account issuers, and thereby their account holders, by operation of a loyalty system, the loyalty system being operable to enable the creation, implementation and management of one or more loyalty programs that provide benefits to members of the loyalty programs in connection with transactions between the account holders and one or more merchants associated with the loyalty system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more account issuers of an account issuer system, wherein there are registered on the loyalty system one or more merchant acquirers of a merchant acquirer system associated with the one or more account issuers, wherein there are registered a plurality of the account holders as members of the loyalty program, wherein the operator of the loyalty system, the one or more account issuers, and the merchants establish rules for accrual and processing of benefits from the merchants to the account holders associated with the one or more account issuers in connection with transactions between the account holders and the merchants with the loyalty system, a system comprising hardware executing software that is operable to:
- receive:
- digitized audio data containing a keyword of a request;
- an identifier for the geo-location of a transmitter of the transmission;
- and
- an identifier for an account holder;
- perform a speech-to-text conversion on the digitized audio data to derive identifier for the keyword of the request;
- accessing one or more databases, using the identifier, the account number of the account holder, and the geo-location of the transmitter of the transmission to look-up information corresponding to:
- a geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- a first set of merchants having a physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- a second set of said merchants in the first set having an attribute matching the identifier for the keyword;
- a third set of said merchants in the second set having an unexpired offer to make a donation to an affinity entity having a physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- and
- for each said merchant in the third set:
- calculate navigation data using the identifier for the geo-location of the transmitter of the transmission and the physical address of the merchant;
- perform a text-to-speech conversion into digitized audio data of:
- a name of the merchant;
- and
- the navigation data;
- transmit the digitized audio data for the third set of merchants for delivery to the transmitter;
- receive, in response to the transmission of the digitized audio data, digitized audio input that includes an identifier for one said merchants in the third set;
- perform a speech-to-text conversion on the digitized audio data to derive the identifier for the one said merchant in the third set;
- transmit to a logical address for the one said merchant in the third set data selected from the group consisting of:
- an identifier for the account holder;
- the corresponding said calculated navigation data;
- and
- the corresponding said unexpired offer to make the donation to the affinity entity having the physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder;
- receive acknowledgement of:
- an authorization request for a transaction between the account holder and the one said merchant in the third set;
- and
- an authorization response to the authorization request sent from the account issuer corresponding to the account holder to the merchant acquirer corresponding to the one said merchant in the third set;
- and
- for each said transaction for which the authorization response includes an indicator that the transaction has been authorized by the account issuer corresponding to the account holder, transmit a message containing the donation to be made to the donation to the affinity entity having the physical address in the geographic area corresponding to the account holder.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.