Electronic vouchers and a system and method for issuing the same
AssigneeJPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
InventorVincent Sethi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system and method for issuing electronic vouchers representing value. An issuing server generates an eVoucher that a recipient may use to purchase goods and services from a merchant's e-commerce Web site. The eVoucher includes an image, such as a corporate logo, that identifies the issuing merchant. Nonimage data, such as a unique identifier for the eVoucher and encrypted arbitrary text, is embedded in the eVoucher image and is used to track the use of the eVoucher and to verify its authenticity.
Claims25
An electronic voucher embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising:
- electronic image data defining an image;
- and
- nonimage data embedded in the image data that uniquely identifies the electronic voucher, wherein altering the nonimage data has no effect on the appearance of the image;
- wherein the image data comprises a plurality of bits that define the image and a plurality of bits that do not define the image, and wherein the plurality of bits that do not define the image comprise the nonimage data;
- and
- wherein the nonimage data, when processed by a computer processor, verifies that the electronic voucher is authentic.
A distributed computer system for issuing electronic vouchers representing value, the system comprising:
- an issuing server that:
- generates an image file including electronic image data defining an image;
- embeds nonimage data in the image file, wherein altering the nonimage data has no effect on the appearance of the image;
- and
- transmits the image file including the embedded nonimage data;
- and
- a database in which a copy of said nonimage data is stored;
- wherein the image data comprises a plurality of bits that define the image and a plurality of bits that do not define the image, and wherein the plurality of bits that do not define the image comprise the nonimage data.
A method for issuing electronic vouchers representing value, comprising:
- generating an image file including electronic image data defining an image;
- embedding nonimage data in said image file, wherein altering the nonimage data has no effect on the appearance of the image;
- storing a copy of the nonimage data;
- and
- transmitting the image file including the image data and the embedded nonimage data to a recipient;
- wherein the image data comprises a plurality of bits that define the image and a plurality of bits that do not define the image, and wherein the plurality of bits that do not define the image comprise the nonimage data.
A method for issuing electronic vouchers representing a value, the method comprising:
- providing an image data file comprising electronic image data defining an image, the image comprising a plurality of pixels;
- storing the image data file;
- embedding nonimage data in a collection of bits present in the image data, each bit in the collection of bits being associated with a pixel in the image, wherein the collection of bits present in the image data is not reflected in an appearance of the image and wherein altering the nonimage data has no effect on the appearance of the image;
- storing a copy of the nonimage data;
- and
- transmitting the image file including the image data and the embedded nonimage data to a recipient;
- wherein the image data comprises a plurality of bits that define the image and a plurality of bits that do not define the image, and wherein the plurality of bits that do not define the image comprise the nonimage data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.