GB2512450A

GB2512450A - Fraud prevention measures

Info

Publication number: GB2512450A
Application number: GB201401512A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Farrell Kent
Original assignee: COMMUNISIS PLC
Current assignee: COMMUNISIS PLC
Priority date: 2013-02-01
Filing date: 2014-01-29
Publication date: 2014-10-01
Anticipated expiration: 2034-01-29
Also published as: GB201401512D0; GB201301787D0; GB2512450B

Abstract

A code 34 is generated and applied to a payment or credit instrument such as a cheque 10 or credit slip. The code is created by means of an algorithm that operates on a string. The string could be a sort code 26, account number 28 or serial number 24 from the cheque. Further steps can be added to the code generation such as interchanging digits between strings, or converting the base of the string (e.g. to base 43) so that the code is shorter in length. Base-converted strings could be concatenated. The code, or Unique Coded Number (UCN), provides a means to identify instances where the personalised details on a payment or credit instrument have been changed.

Description

Fraud Prevention Measures This invention relates to fraud prevention measures and in particular, but not limited to, fraud prevention measures relating to cheque fraud.

A proportion of cheque fraud is due to fraudulent alteration of personal details. The personal details are first included on a cheque by a manufacturer using a laser printing technique. A fraudster may scrape away, remove or amend the personal details and add new, fraudulent, details relating to a different account. The altered cheque can then be presented as payment and the amount to which it relates is debited from a different account as fraudulently detailed on the cheque.

The personal details on a cheque and corresponding credit slips are the customer name, sort code, account number and serial number. It is the sort code, account number and serial number that provide the data used by banks and clearing houses to identify a bank account to which a cheque or credit slip relates.

It is an object of the present invention to address the fraudulent practice mentioned above.

According to the present invention there is provided an apparatus and method as set forth in the appended claims. Other features of the invention will be apparent from the dependent

claims, and the description which follows.

According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of generating a security code for a payment or credit instrument, the method comprising: generating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof; and applying the generated code to the payment/credit instrument in at least one location.

The code being based on the at least one string of information may be taken to mean that the code is generated from the at least one string of information.

The code may be based on one or more of a bank sort code, a payment/credit instrument serial number and an account number for the payment/credit instrument. Preferably the code is based on all three of the bank sort code, payment/credit instrument serial number and account number for the payment/credit instrument. The at least one string of information may be one or more of a bank sort code, a payment/credit instrument serial number and an account number for the payment/credit instrument.

The generation of the code may include moving one or more digits from one string of information to another string of information. The movement of the digits may be carried out to achieve a desired length of string of information. The resulting strings of information are preferably no more than 7 characters long.

Preferably, three strings of information are used, having lengths of preferably six or seven characters, more preferably one having a length of six characters and two having lengths of seven characters.

Preferably the or each string of information is converted to a code by conversion to another base, preferably base 43. Conversion of a seven digit string to base 43 preferably results in a five character string. Conversion of a six digit numeral into base 43 preferably results in a four character string.

The base-converted strings are preferably concatenated.

The characters of the concatenated strings are preferably re-ordered based on a re-ordering algorithm.

The generated code may be applied to the payment/credit instrument by a printing technique.

The invention extends to a method of generating a payment/credit instrument by: generating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof; and applying the generated code to the payment/credit instrument in at least one location.

The invention extends to a payment/credit instrument incorporating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof.

The payment or credit instrument may be a cheque or credit slip, as typically used in personal and business banking.

For a better understanding of the invention, and to show how embodiments of the same may be carried into effect, reference will now be made, by way of example, to the accompanying diagrammatic drawings in which: Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a cheque.

Figure 1 shows the layout of a cheque 10. The following elements are present on prior art cheques. The cheque is printed with information such as a bank logo 12; bank details 14, such as an address of the bank; a date area 16 for a user to enter a date; a signature line 20 for a user to sign the cheque 10. An MICR line 22 is a strip of the cheque at a lower edge thereof that incorporates machine-readable information, such as a cheque serial number 24, a sort code 26 and an account number 28 of the cheque owners bank account. Two amount lines 30 are provided for a user to write in the amount of a cheque in words; and a pay line 32 is provided fora user to write in a payee of the cheque 10.

The following description relates to a method of generating a Unique Coded Number (UCN) 34 that is applied to the cheque 10 and does not appear on prior art cheques. The UCN 34 is created by means of an algorithm that links together the sort code, account number and serial number on a cheque/credit. The UCN 34 is personalised onto the document in order to provide a means to identify instances where the personalised details have been changed.

Within the cheque and credit clearing process the main clearing houses that provide cheque processing services such as iPSL and HP Enterprise Services use software and systems such as, for example Dia Europe Fraud Detection Solutions (www.diaeurooe.com) to identify cheque fraud as part of the clearing cycle. These systems are used to verify that the sort code, account number and serial number details have not been amended and to reject any items during the cheque clearing process that do not match the correct UCN 34. The UCN 34 is generated using the account number, sort code, and serial number on a cheque or credit.

Therefore, it will be unique to each individual cheque. The UCN 34 consists of 14 alphanumeric characters/symbols.

3. Overview of Algorithm Process Overview A cheque/credit manufacturer generates a UCN 34 to be laser printed in two positions on the cheque document when the cheque document is being personalised. This will link the sort code, serial number and account number that is printed within the MICR line 22 of the document. The MICR line 22 is located along a lower edge of the cheque and printed in accordance with the standards provided in BS ISO 1004:1 995. The MICR line 22 is a machine-readable part of the cheque/credit.

Algorithm Calculation Sort Code, Serial Number and Account Number A codeline in the MICR line 22 of a prior art cheque already contains a 6 digit numeric sort code, an 8 digit numeric account number and a 6 digit serial number, so2O characters in total (6,8,6), as shown in Figure 1.

The method described herein uses a conversion of a decimal number to a base 43 number.

The effect of conversion to base 43 is to render a 7 digit number into S characters and a 6 digit number into 4 characters. Base 43 is a positional numeral system using 43 as the radix. The choice of 43 is convenient in that the digits can be represented using selected ASCII Characters. Base 43 is therefore the most compact case-insensitive alphanumeric numeral system using ASCII characters.

As the Account Number is 8 characters, the method moves the last character of this to be at the front of the serial number; giving three separate numbers of a maximum of 6, 7 and 7, instead of 6, 8 and 6.

For example, Sod Code 20-20-20, Account Number 12345678, Serial Number 100000 would become: 8100000 These three separate values can then be converted to base 43 using any of the well known conversions. The conversion provides three sets of alphanumeric values, one of which will be represented as 4 characters and the other two of S characters, giving a total of 14 characters.

Conversion of the above three sets of numeric values to base 43, using the character set defined in section above would be as follows: 40E9 2IFW# 41#Z7 The natural string of code would be personalised as such: 4QE92lPV4l#Z7 An explanation of how this is achieved is provided below, with some introductory explanation first.

Base 10, also known as the decimal system, is the ordinary base we use every day. Our decimal number system is known as a positional number system, because the value of the number depends on the position of the digits. For example, the number 123 has a very different value than the number 321, although the same digits are used in both numbers.

In a positional number system, the value of each digit is determined by which place it appears in the full number. The lowest place value is the rightmost position, and each successive position to the left has a higher place value.

In our decimal number system, the rightmost position represents the "ones" column, the next position represents the "tens" column, the next position represents "hundreds", etc. Therefore, the number 123 represents 1 hundred and 2 tens and 3 units, whereas the number 321 represents 3 hundreds and 2 tens and 1 unit.

Base 2 is the binary system where we use only 2 digits to represent a value, 0 and 1, so we would need far more characters to represent the same value in baselO. For example to represent 999999 baselo value in base2 (binary system) we need 20 characters which would be 11110100001000111111.

Going from right to left, this means: 1 times2Ao(1) = 1 1 times 2A1 (2) = 2 1 times 2"2 (4) = 4 1 times 2A3 (8) = 8 1 times 2A4 (16) = 16 1 times 2A5 (32) = 32 0 times 2A6 (64) = 0 Otimes2A7 (128) = 0 0 times 2A8 (256) = 0 1 times 2A9 (512) 512 Otimes2AlO (1024) = 0 Otimes2All (2048) =0 0 times 2A1 2 (4096) = 0 Otimes2Al3(8192) =0 1 times2Al4(16384) = 16384 Otimes2AlS (32768) = 0 1 times 2A16 (65536) = 65536 1 times2Al7(131072) = 131072 1 times 2A18 (262144) = 262144 1 times 2A1 9 (524288) = 524288 If we then sum up all these calculations, we get back to the original baselO value 1+2+4+8+16+32+512+16384+65536+131 072÷262144+524288 = 999999 As we need to reduce the amount of characters we print to represent the baselO values, we need to move to a higher base number -thus choosing base43.

The same principle applies to any number base. Base 43 was chosen, so instead of to the power of 10, we use to the power of 43 in order to reduce the number of characters that we use to represent the base 10 value. As there are only 10 digits (base 10), we need to use other non-numeric characters to represent a higher base than 10. We have chosen to use 43 characters from the asch table but for security reasons we have not stated which they are.

As a further security mechanism around the decoding of this number, the 14 characters are scrambled into a different order.

Final Code This would be the code of 14 characters lasered onto the cheque as follows: PIW#4EQ94#217Z In order to reduce the risk of rejections due to the UCN 34 failing to read in the clearing process (for example due to the customer writing over it), it will be laser printed in two separate positions, as detailed below.

The same UCN 34 will be positioned in two places: above the MICR codeline, on the left of the document, after the production date; and near the top of the cheque, between the bank logo and an area called the restraint area, which is located 53mm from the left hand edge of the cheque.

There are a number of different sizes and layouts of cheque types and as such it may be necessary to vary the position of the UCN 34 depending on the cheque type.

UCN 34 Font TypelSize Two font options for the UCN 34 have been considered A first option uses the same font currently used for the production date and customer name (in the current example called Communisis internal Font 11). This is a proportional font. The second option is to use a different font which is fixed length (this could Communisis internal Font 15).

Clearing Process/Processing System The producer of the cheques described herein will provide a.dll file to the clearing company to decrypt the UCN 34. The sort code, account number, serial number and UCN 34 are scanned and recorded as part of the cheque scanning process by the processing system. These details are passed to the.dll, which will then decrypt the UCN 34, review the information and return a value of True (a match) or False (a mis-match). Acceptance or rejection will be based on whether an exact match is found or not. If the two codes do not match this indicates the potential fraudulent alteration of some of the details on the cheque.

The use of the.dll file to provide reconciliation between the UCN 34 and the personal details (sort code, account number and serial number) can be replaced with other suitable means of reviewing the scanned UCN 34 and sort code, account number and serial number.

The invention advantageously provides a method of encoding information on a cheque based on and in addition to information already provided on the cheque to enable the cheque to be scrutinised for authenticity. The invention also extends to the provision of cheques with fraud prevention measures added thereto.

Attention is directed to all papers and documents which are filed concurrently with or previous to this specification in connection with this application and which are open to public inspection with this specification, and the contents of all such papers and documents are incorporated herein by reference.

All of the features disclosed in this specification (including any accompanying claims, abstract and drawings), and/or all of the steps of any method or process so disclosed, may be combined in any combination, except combinations where at least some of such features and/or steps are mutually exclusive.

Each feature disclosed in this specification (including any accompanying claims, abstract and drawings) may be replaced by alternative features serving the same, equivalent or similar purpose, unless expressly stated otherwise. Thus, unless expressly stated otherwise, each feature disclosed is one example only of a generic series of equivalent or similar features.

The invention is not restricted to the details of the foregoing embodiment(s). The invention extends to any novel one, or any novel combination, of the features disclosed in this

B

specification (including any accompanying claims, abstract and drawings), orto any novel one, or any novel combination, of the steps of any method or process so disclosed.

Claims

CLA I MS1. A method of generating a security code for a payment or credit instrument comprising: generating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof; and applying the generated code to the payment/credit instrument in at least one location.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the code is based on one or more of a bank sort code, a payment/credit instrument serial number and an account number for the payment/credit instrument.
3. The method of claim 1 or claim 2, wherein the at least one string of information is one or more of a bank sort code, a payment/credit instrument serial number and an account number for the payment/credit instrument.
4. The method according to any preceding claim, wherein the generation of the code includes moving one or more digits from one string of information to another string of information.
5. The method of claim 4, wherein the movement of the digits is carried out to achieve a desired length of string of information.
6. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the or each string of information is converted to a code by conversion to another base,
7. The method of claim 6, wherein the base-converted strings are concatenated.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the characters of the concatenated strings are re-ordered based on a re-ordering algorithm.
9. The method of any preceding claim, wherein thegenerated code is applied to the payment/credit instrument by a printing technique.
10. A method of generating a payment/credit instrument by: generating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof; and applying the generated code to the payment/credit instrument in at least one location.
11. A payment/credit instrument incorporating a code based on at least one string of information to be applied to the payment/credit instrument during generation thereof.
12. The payment or credit instrument instrument of claim 11 which is a cheque or credit slip, as typically used in personal and business banking.