EP1362333A1

EP1362333A1 - Method and device for securing a transaction between a shopkeeper and a customer with a payment card

Info

Publication number: EP1362333A1
Application number: EP02704861A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Stéphane Petit; Eric Hannecart; Philippe Magliulo
Original assignee: France Telecom SA
Current assignee: Orange SA
Priority date: 2001-02-23
Filing date: 2002-02-18
Publication date: 2003-11-19
Also published as: FR2821506A1; WO2002069283A1

Abstract

A system for securing a transaction between a shopkeeper (10) and a customer (20) with a payment card, comprising at least one management unit (11, 30, 21) which is able to authorize said transaction on the basis of identification data proper to said payment card. According to the invention, said system also comprises a n additional complementary decision module (41) which can authorize the transaction after verification of at least one control criterion determined by the card holder (20) on the basis of at least one parameter which is proper to said transaction. The invention can be used in all mail-order type transactions.

Description

METHOD AND DEVICE FOR SECURING A TRANSACTION BETWEEN A TRADER AND A CUSTOMER HOLDING A CARD

PAYMENT

The present invention relates to a method and a system for securing a transaction between a merchant and a customer carrying a payment card.

The invention finds a particularly advantageous application in the field of securing “distance selling” type transactions carried out by means of a payment card. It also applies to transactions using a magnetic stripe on the said payment card.

In general, payment cards include, on the one hand, a visual integrating information on the holder, in particular his name, as well as identification data specific to each payment card, namely his number. identification and its expiry date, and, on the other hand, a magnetic strip on which the same identification data are recorded.

Payment cards of this type can be published by groups of commercial brands, by financing organizations or by banking establishments most often grouped into networks. It should be noted that in the case of so-called bank cards, the body of the card may include an electronic component, sometimes called a "chip", which contains not only all the information and data relating to the card and its holder, but also means, microprocessor and associated software, capable of performing complex authentication operations, encryption for example.

To carry out a financial transaction with a payment card, one can use the only data specific to said card contained in the visual mentioned above. This procedure is frequent in France in transactions known as "distance selling". When said distance selling is carried out on a communication network such as the Internet, the customer carrying the payment card must manually enter the identification number and expiration date of his card on the keyboard of his personal computer. In the particular case of Mail order sales, the customer enters this same data on a paper form which he then sends to the merchant by post.

The merchant then transmits the identification data of the card to a management organization accompanied by a request for authorization of the transaction. The management body carries out a certain number of checks concerning the card and the holder and authorizes or not the transaction. You can also carry out a transaction using a payment card using the identification data present in the magnetic strip of the card. This procedure is now relatively little practiced in local shops except in the case of private networks managed in particular by groups of commercial brands. To carry out such a transaction, the merchant has a magnetic stripe reader which records the data of the transaction and transmits it to a network management body to which the card belongs. If an authorization is given by the management body, a slip printed by the reader must be signed by the card holder before the transaction can be carried out.

However, such payment cards are easily duplicable, physically or by recovering identification data, and fraudulent. The high rates of fraud in the banking world come from this source.

In order to remedy this situation, it was decided to add a confidential code to the identification data of the card, this code being known only to the card holder, and, above all, to secure exchanges between information through the use of smart cards. It is then possible:

- to authenticate to each transaction the card holder by presentation and local verification of the confidential code,

- and then generate evidence (certificates) on the act of purchase using the personalized secrets that the card contains. However, if, in some countries, payment card processing terminals have been widely deployed in local shops, this procedure being the only one to provide the merchant with payment guarantees by contract, this is not the case. case today in the field of distance trade. To do this, it would indeed be necessary to generalize among individuals the use of card readers capable of carrying out transactions financial under reasonable security conditions. However, currently, the failure to disseminate to the public secure card readers connected to a personal computer to trade on the Internet demonstrates the difficulty of such generalization. Another solution based on the use of a dual-slot mobile terminal also exists, but similarly encounters the difficulties associated with large-scale deployment.

Today there are companies that provide their customers with the means to secure the use of chipless payment cards in the context of the Internet. These means essentially consist in avoiding the online circulation of the card number. We will quote for example:

- electronic commerce platforms which offer holders the possibility of permanently registering their payment card number on their server and using a pseudonym (username, password sometimes accompanied by a questionnaire) to access the resource. - systems which replace the real number of the payment card with a perfectly formed temporary number. This number, collected from a specialized authorization center, is used by the holder to make a purchase from a merchant, transits on the merchant's server where it appears as a real payment card number, and goes up to a center authorization system which then processes the transaction by replacing the temporary number with the real card number and sending the transaction back to the authorization center of the bearer's financial organization.

In all cases, these procedures effectively circumvent the problem of online interception of card data, but cannot solve the problem of their fraudulent obtaining by other circuits and their online use.

Also, the technical problem to be solved by the object of the present invention is to propose a method of securing a transaction between a merchant and a customer carrying a payment card, said transaction involving an authorization request from identification data specific to said payment card, a process which would increase the security of transactions for which knowledge of the card's only identification data is sufficient to obtain authorization.

The solution to the technical problem posed consists, according to the present invention, in that the transaction is authorized after verification in a complementary decision module (41) of at least one control criterion determined from at least one parameter specific to said transaction, said control criterion being decided by said bearer (20).

Likewise, a system for securing a transaction between a merchant and a customer carrying a payment card, said system comprising at least one management body capable of authorizing said transaction on the basis of identification data specific to said card. according to the invention is particularly remarkable in that said system also includes an additional decision-making module capable of authorizing the transaction after verification of at least one control criterion determined by said holder on the basis of at least one parameter specific to said transaction.

Thus, upon the usual authorization request involving the identification data of the card, the method of the invention independently adds a complementary control which has the particularity, on the one hand, of being decided by the bearer itself, and, on the other hand, depend on parameters related to the transaction itself. This results in very strong security due to the fact that said control criteria do not circulate online and are difficult to access by fraudsters. According to one embodiment of the invention, said transaction-specific parameter is chosen from the following list, separately or in combination: existence of the transaction during a given period, number of transactions over a given fixed or sliding period, amount of the transaction in unit or cumulative value, currency of the transaction, identity of the merchant.

By existence of the transaction during a given period, we mean the possibility for the holder to decide whether or not to authorize any transaction, whatever it may be, during the chosen given period. The security provided by the invention can therefore be complete, it suffices for the bearer to prohibit any transaction outright.

The invention also provides a filtering process according to which said verification is carried out for a transaction of at least one given type. This arrangement is reflected in the system of the invention in that it further comprises a filtering module capable of subjecting said module additional business intelligence request for verification for a transaction of at least one given type.

For example, one can consider not subjecting to additional control transactions which are considered to be sufficiently secure, such as those containing a smart card certificate or indicating that they were carried out with a payment card at chip. The method of securing the invention is then used only if said transaction is of the distance selling type, carried out on the Internet or on paper form, or also in the case where said transaction is of the type implementing a track. magnetic of said payment card.

Finally, the invention provides that said control criterion can be modified by the holder of the payment card. For this purpose, the security system, object of the invention, must be adapted so that it further comprises a configuration interface module intended for the modification by the payment card holder of said criterion. control.

The description which follows with reference to the appended drawing, given by way of nonlimiting example, will make it clear what the invention consists of and how it can be implemented.

Figure 1 is a block diagram of a security system according to the invention.

FIG. 1 shows a system for securing a transaction between a merchant 10 and a customer 20 carrying a payment card, a bank card, for example, issued by a management organization 30, also called a network, specialized in the distribution and processing of such cards. To illustrate the security method implemented by the system of FIG. 1, it will be assumed that said transaction is of the “distance selling” type on the Internet.

After having made his choice in the catalog which is presented to him on the screen of his personal computer, the customer 20 must provide (1) to the merchant 10 identification data specific to his payment card, namely for example his number and its expiration date. From this data, and other information related to the context of the purchase itself, the merchant 10 addresses (2) to the authorization center 11 of his banking institution a request for authorization of the transaction. This request is transmitted (3) to the network 30 of bank cards which performs a a certain number of checks concerning said card identification data, number and date of validity, as well as, for example, the presence of the card on a red list of cards struck with prohibition. To complete the verification process, the network 30 of bank cards consults (4) the authorization center 21 of the bearer's banking institution 20 so as to implement internal controls, such as the account balance statement of the wearer 20.

To all these verifications which essentially relate to the identification data of the card, the security method of the invention adds another authorization condition consisting of a complementary operation of verifying at least one control criterion determined by said holder. from at least one parameter specific to said transaction.

To this end, the transaction securing system of FIG. 1 comprises a complementary decision-making module 41 capable of carrying out said complementary verification operation and of authorizing the transaction in the event of positive verification.

Thus, the holder 20 can decide to systematically refuse such or such requests for authorization of financial transactions according to criteria which he will have defined himself. In this case, the complementary decision-making module 41, consulted (5) by the holder's authorization center 21, will send back (6) a negative response to the acceptance of the transaction. This prohibition to carry out the transaction will then be transmitted (7, 8) to the merchant's authorization center 11 via the network 30. Consequently, the merchant 10, informed (9) by his authorization center 11, will refuse (10) the sale to bearer 20 since the request for authorization of the transaction is a failure.

It is understood that, in such a system, the bearer 20 has perfect control over the authorization process: it is he and he alone who can positively lead to a request for authorization of a financial transaction. The control criteria determined by the carrier 20 and used by the complementary decision-making module 41 can be very varied in nature. As examples, some possible criteria will now be presented, whether taken separately or in combination.

A first basic criterion has as parameter the existence of the transaction itself, namely that the bearer 20 has the possibility of prohibiting or authorize all financial transactions resulting from processing according to the distance selling procedure. Of course, this criterion can vary over time, the bearer 20 making a remote purchase being able to temporarily authorize for a given period, one hour for example, all transactions carried out according to this procedure. Furthermore, this same criterion can also be considered by the complementary decision-making module 41 as a default criterion: in the absence of any intention expressed by the holder 20 in this regard, the module 41 blocks all the authorization requests which it are presented. A second control criterion is linked to the parameter represented by the number of transactions processed over a given period, fixed or rolling, defined by the holder 20. If, during the period considered, this number reaches a maximum value, any transaction requested subsequently is systematically refused. A third criterion is configured on the amount of the transaction, whether in unit value or in cumulative value over a fixed or rolling period of time. More specifically, when the transaction exceeds a maximum amount set by the holder 20, the authorization of the financial transaction is refused. Likewise, when the total number of transactions carried out over a given period reaches a ceiling set by the holder 20, any new transaction presented is not authorized. This criterion can be treated globally or by merchant.

A fourth control criterion brings into play the parameter constituted by the currency of the transaction. Thus, a holder 20 may authorize only financial transactions denominated in francs or pounds, the other emission currencies causing a negative response to the authorization request.

Finally, a fifth criterion is based on the parameter defined by the identity of the merchant 10. According to this criterion, a holder 20 may only accept requests for authorization of financial transactions from a merchant 10 or a group of merchants, identified by their name or by their type of activity. During a purchase by distance selling, it is then possible, by making available a directory of merchants including their bank numbers, to select the acceptance of requests for authorization of transactions from these merchants only. We can observe in Figure 1 the presence in the authorization procedure of a filtering module 42 whose role is to submit to the complementary decision-making module 41 the requests for verification of the control criteria corresponding to transactions of one or more types 5 given. In the example chosen, these will be distance selling transactions on the Internet, as they could just as easily be distance selling transactions on paper form, or transactions using the magnetic stripe of cards of payment, these transactions having an insufficient level of security which justifies a process

10. special authorization.

The purpose of this filtering module 42 is therefore to direct authorization requests from, for example, distance selling, to the complementary decision-making module 41. It is integrated into the processing chain of the authorization center 21 of the bearer's banking establishment 20, which

15 first carries out checks which are specific to it, such as the state of the balance of the bearer 20, then possibly calls upon the complementary decisional module 41 if the transaction is of a type recognized by the filtering module 42. This has the effect of limiting verification requests to module 41.

In order to allow the bearer 20 of the payment card to modify his control criteria, a configuration module 43 is provided serving as an interface between the bearer 20 and the complementary decision-making module 41. This configuration interface module 43 can take various forms:

25 - in the form of a Web, WAP or Minitel server. The wearer 20 accesses via his personal computer, his mobile phone or his Minitel terminal, a menu allowing him to securely, by identifier and password, configure the module 41 according to the control criteria of his choice, with the possibility to be able to possibly combine them.

30 - in the form of a voice server. The configuration services of the complementary decision-making module 41 can also be accessible via a voice server. However, it is clear that the configuration thus carried out will be more coarse, in particular as regards the combinations of criteria, than with a Web server for example, with regard to the quality of the human-machine interface seen from the carrier 20.

Claims

1. Method for securing a transaction between a merchant (10) and a customer (20) carrying a payment card, said transaction involving an authorization request from identification data specific to said payment card, characterized in that the transaction is authorized after verification in an additional decision-making module (41) of at least one control criterion determined from at least one parameter specific to said transaction, said control criterion being decided by said holder ( 20).

2. Securing method according to claim 1, characterized in that said verification is carried out for a transaction of at least one given type.

3. Securing method according to claim 2, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing the Internet network.

4. A security method according to claim 2, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing a paper form.

5. A security method according to claim 2, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing a magnetic stripe of said payment card.

6. Securing method according to any one of claims

1 to 5, characterized in that said control criterion can be modified by the holder (20) of the payment card.

7. Securing method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that said transaction-specific parameter is chosen from the following list, separately or in combination: existence of the transaction during a given period, number of transactions over a given fixed or rolling period, amount of the transaction in unit or cumulative value, currency of the transaction, identity of the merchant.

8. System for securing a transaction between a merchant (10) and a customer (20) carrying a payment card, said system comprising at least one management body (11, 30, 21) capable of authorizing said transaction from identification data specific to said payment card, characterized in that said system also comprises an additional decision-making module (41) capable of authorizing the transaction after verification of at least one control criterion determined by said holder (20) from at least one parameter specific to said transaction.

9. Securing system according to claim 8, characterized in that it further comprises a filter module (42) capable of subjecting to said audit

5 complementary decision module (41) a verification request for a transaction of at least one given type.

10. Security system according to claim 9, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing the Internet.

11. Securing system according to claim 9, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing a paper form.

12. Security system according to claim 9, characterized in that said transaction is of the type implementing a magnetic stripe of said payment card.

13. Securing system according to any one of claims 15 8 to 12, characterized in that it also comprises a configuration interface module (43) intended for the modification by the holder (20) of the card. payment of said control criterion.

14. Securing system according to any one of claims 8 to 13, characterized in that said parameter specific to the transaction is chosen

20 in the following list, separately or in combination: existence of the transaction during a given period, number of transactions over a given fixed or rolling period, amount of the transaction in unit or cumulative value, currency of the transaction, identity of the merchant.

15. Complementary decision module (41) for a system for securing a transaction between a merchant (10) and a customer (20) carrying a payment card according to any one of claims 8 to 14, characterized in that said complementary decision-making module (41) is able to authorize the transaction after verification of at least one control criterion determined by said holder (20) from at least one parameter 30 specific to said transaction.

16. Filtering module (42) for a system for securing a transaction between a merchant (10) and a customer (20) carrying a payment card, said system comprising a complementary decision-making module (41) according to claim 15, characterized in that said module (42) of filtering is able to submit to said complementary decision-making module (41) a verification request for a transaction of at least one given type.

17. Configuration interface module (43) for a system for securing a transaction between a merchant (10) and a customer (20) carrying a payment card, said system comprising a complementary decision-making module (41) according to claim 15, characterized in that said configuration interface module (43) is intended for the modification by the bearer (20) of the payment card of said control criterion.