Mobile Payment Patent Review: Mobile Payment System

US20080270301

Assignee: American Express

Summary: This invention relate to methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer program products for enabling a merchant to obtain payment for a purchase from a consumer who uses a mobile communication device to make the purchase.

Background: Conventionally, a “financial transaction instrument” is embodied as a card-shaped device (e.g., a credit card, a charge card, a debit card, a pre-paid or stored-value card, or the like). Consumers, however, very often use financial transaction instruments as convenient forms of payment for purchases of goods and/or services (“goods/services”) instead of cash or checks. When a consumer makes a purchase over the telephone, the consumer may, for example, give a credit card number as a way of effecting payment, and then sign the credit card receipt upon being presented with the purchased item. However, these ways of effecting payment in a purchase made over the telephone can be inconvenient and can add time to the process for the consumer and for the merchant. They can also add cost to the process because there are risks to the merchant in a telephone transaction, in that payment from the consumer is not yet confirmed. There exists, therefore, a need to provide a payment system that can reduce the time involved in the process and that can alleviate the inconvenience associated therewith. There also exists a need to provide a reliable payment system for handling orders over the telephone.

Various embodiments of the present invention provide the advantage of making the process for paying for the purchase more convenient to the consumer and the merchant. Another advantage is that the time involved in the purchase process can be reduced. Yet another is that the risk to a merchant in a telephone transaction is reduced, because payment from the consumer is confirmed in advance, thereby reducing cost.

The first Claim: A computer-readable storage medium storing control logic for causing a computer to enable a merchant to obtain payment for a purchase from a customer that uses a mobile communication device to make the purchase, the control logic comprising:

first computer-readable program code for causing the computer to receive a request for payment transmitted from a merchant terminal, wherein the request for payment includes an identification code of the customer's mobile communication device and a purchase amount;

second computer-readable program code for causing the computer to transmit a purchase message to the customer's mobile communication device, wherein the purchase message includes: an identification of the merchant, the purchase amount, and a request for purchase confirmation;

third computer-readable program code for causing the computer to receive a response to the request for purchase confirmation transmitted from the customer's mobile communication device; and

fourth computer-readable program code for causing the computer to transmit to the merchant terminal information identifying a financial account belonging to the customer upon determining that the response to the request for purchase confirmation is affirmative.


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