System for producing verifiable kiosk receipts and records
AssigneePitney Bowes Inc.
InventorRonald P. Sansone
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A postage meter that is contained in a kiosk may be used to produce verifiable receipts for commercial transactions. The imbedded digital metering cryptographic technology that is contained in a postage meter may be used to produce a verifiable receipt. Several of the collected "commercial" transaction data elements are presented to the existing meter encryption module for processing as the meter was processing an envelope. The output encrypted data string is used as a new field in the receipt. Assuring that the receipt is authentic. Verification can be performed as follows: using the printed receipt as a source of data (at some later time) periodically on the archived records stored in the kiosk during the day on the uploaded "order" files before actual processing.
Claims12
A system for ordering goods and/or services and printing verifiable, customer receipts, which receipts are not postage indicia, for the goods and/or services ordered, said system comprising:
- means for ordering the goods and/or services;
- means coupled to said ordering means for paying for the ordered goods and/or services;
- means for determining the destination of delivery of the ordered goods and/or services;
- means for determining the name and address of a sender of the ordered goods and/or services;
- means coupled to said destination determining means, said ordering means and said name and address determining means for printing a verifiable customer receipt that comprises a cryptographic number, which cryptographic number is calculated based on and is unique to the destination of delivery of the goods and/or services, the cost of goods and/or services ordered, and the name and address of the sender of the goods and/or services;
- and
- means coupled to said cryptographic printing means for delivering the goods and/or services.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.