US 5,635,695 A · Chip card based payment system having an on-card flag for specifying proper completion of a prior card balance replenishment session

Abstract

Improved integrity of a payment system for paying for services or goods, for example, telephone facilities, through use of electronic payment cards. In any session to increase a card balance, a "flag" is placed ("1") on the payment card which indicates that the session must not be interrupted. After completion, the flag is removed again ("0"). A session to pay for the product or the service or to increase the balance can only be established if the flag is absent ("0") indicating that the last session to increase the balance was correctly completed. If, on the other hand, the flag is still "1" at the start of a session, a correction routine is first performed in which the previous session to increase the balance is then correctly concluded to prevent the flag being removed by fraud, the flag can only be removed by a central system (PSTN/ABS) through issurance of an authorized instruction.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A payment system comprising:

a terminal;
a payment card for communicatively interacting with the terminal so as to effectuate a transaction therethrough;
means, operative in conjunction with a process which increases a balance stored in the card, for changing a symbol stored in the card from a first symbol to a second symbol, wherein said changing means:
detects, at a beginning of said process, if said first or said second symbol is stored in the card;
if said second symbol is stored, changes said second symbol to said first symbol and performs said process to increase the stored balance;
and
if said first symbol is stored, indicates that a previous execution of said process was interrupted prior to completion and completes or repeats the previous execution of the process.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Chip card based payment system having an on-card flag for specifying proper completion of a prior card balance replenishment session

Life of this patent

Chip card based payment system having an on-card flag for specifying proper completion of a prior card balance replenishment session

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims10