US 7,257,554 B1 · Anonymous purchases while allowing verifiable identities for refunds returned along the paths taken to make the purchases

Abstract

An electronic commerce system and method has a number of computer systems connected by a network, including a broker computer system having a database of scrips representing a form of currency, a vendor computer system having a database containing products which may be exchanged for the scrips, and a consumer computer system with which a user may initiate transactions to obtain the products contained in the database of the vendor computer system in return for scrip. The broker issues scrip to the consumer having a Customer ID including a Hash subfield containing a value produced by consumer identifying information hashed with a nonce. When the scrip is exchanged for additional scrip, the value in the Hash subfield is hashed with another nonce. The consumer stores the nonces used to produce the Hash subfield in a wallet. If a vendor issuing a refund for scrip wishes to verify the identity of the consumer, the consumer provides the vendor with the identifying information and the chain of nonces used to produce the value of the Hash subfield. The vendor recreates the value of the Hash Subfield to verify the identifying information. Then, the vendor issues a refund coupon having the same Customer ID as the scrip being refunded. The consumer provides the refund coupon to the broker along with the Customer ID of the scrip used to purchase the refunded scrip. Then, the broker issues the consumer new scrip having the provided customer ID.

Claims15

Dependent claims

A system comprising:

a first system for issuing scrip, the scrip including a value derived from an identification of a recipient of the scrip;
and
a second system for receiving the scrip issued by the first system from a party seeking a refund and issuing a refund in response thereto, the second system further adapted to receive from the party seeking the refund the identification of the recipient of the scrip and values enabling transformation by the second system of the identification of the recipient of the scrip into the value derived from the identification of the recipient of the scrip, and to utilize the received values to verify that the party seeking the refund is the recipient of the scrip.

A computer readable medium having computer instructions encoded thereon for directing a computer system to perform steps for providing a refund in an electronic commerce system, the steps comprising:

receiving a request to refund electronic currency, the electronic currency including a value identifying the party to whom the currency was issued;
receiving, from the party seeking the refund, identifying information identifying the party seeking the refund and values for transforming the information identifying the party seeking the refund into the value identifying the party to whom the currency was issued;
utilizing the received values to verify that the received identifying information matches the value in the electronic currency identifying the party to whom the electronic currency was issued;
and
responsive to a positive verification, entitling the party to whom the electronic currency was issued to a refund for the electronic currency.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Anonymous purchases while allowing verifiable identities for refunds returned along the paths taken to make the purchases

Life of this patent

Anonymous purchases while allowing verifiable identities for refunds returned along the paths taken to make the purchases

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims15