Point-of-sale bill authentication
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsScott D. Mastie, Joan L. Mitchell
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The invention includes systems, methods and program products for providing real-time point-of-sale paper currency, i.e., bill, authentication and recordation. The invention provides a point-of-sale terminal capable of real-time authentication and recordation of paper currency, a currency monitoring system for tracking paper currency usage and conducting paper currency authentication relative to a currency issuing entity's database, and a reconciliation system for reconciling a point-of-sale terminal.
Claims25
A method of authenticating a bill at a point-of-sale terminal, the method comprising the steps of:
- imaging a bill presented for payment at the point-of-sale terminal to create a bill image;
- conducting optical character recognition on the bill image to determine bill authenticating data;
- determining whether the bill is authentic in real-time by:
- communicating the bill authenticating data to a currency monitoring system that evaluates bill authenticity by comparing the bill authenticating data to a currency database including a list of stolen bills to determine whether the bill was stolen, and awaiting an authentication response to the point-of-sale terminal;
- and
- reconciling the point-of-sale terminal by inputting at least one of a bill image and bill authenticating data of each actual bill present at a specific time and determining whether at least one of the bill image and the bill authenticating data of each bill imaged by the point-of-sale terminal has a corresponding actual bill present at the specified time based on the inputting.
A point-of-sale terminal comprising:
- means for imaging a bill presented for payment at the point-of-sale terminal to create a bill image;
- means for determining bill authenticating data;
- means for authenticating the bill in real-time by communicating the bill authenticating data to a currency monitoring system that evaluates bill authenticity by comparing the bill authenticating data to a currency database including a list of stolen bills to determine whether the bill was stolen, and awaiting an authentication response to the point-of-sale terminal;
- and
- means for communicating the bill authenticating data to a means for reconciling the point-of-sale terminal by inputting at least one of a bill image and bill authenticating data of each actual bill present at a specified time and determining whether at least one of the bill image and the bill authenticating data of each bill imaged by the point-of-sale terminal has a corresponding actual bill present at the specified time based on the inputting.
A currency monitoring system for a bill received at a point-of-sale terminal, the system comprising:
- means for receiving authenticating data regarding the bill
- means for authenticating the bill including verifying that the bill is not stolen by comparison of the authenticating data to a currency database including data on bills reported as stolen;
- reconciling the point-of-sale terminal by inputting at least one of a bill image and bill authenticating data of each actual bill present at a specified time and determining whether at least one of the bill image and the bill authenticating data of each bill imaged by the point-of-sale terminal has a corresponding actual bill present at the specified time based on the inputting.
A system for reconciling a point-of-sale terminal, the system comprising:
- means for receiving a bill image of a bill received at the point-of-sale terminal;
- and
- means for reconciling the POS terminal by inputting at least one of a bill image and bill authenticating data of each actual bill present at a specified time and determining whether at least one of the bill image and a serial number of each bill imaged by the POS terminal has a corresponding actual bill present at the specified time based on the inputting.
A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for authenticating a bill at a point-of-sale terminal, the program product comprising:
- program code configured to authenticate the bill in real-time by communicating bill authenticating data, obtained by conducting optical character recognition on an image of the bill, to a currency monitoring system, and awaiting an authentication response to the point-of-sale terminal as to whether the bill was reported as stolen, which is determined by comparing the bill authenticating data to a currency database including a list of stolen bills;
- and
- program code configured to reconcile the point-of-sale terminal by inputting at least one of a bill image and bill authenticating data of each actual bill present at a specified time end determining whether at least one of the bill image and the bill authenticating data of each bill imaged by the point-of-sale terminal has a corresponding actual bill present at the specified time based on the inputting.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.