JPH07146891A - Prepaid card processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make the most or the essential advantage of a prepaid card by limiting the amount of money of payment on the card to the fractional money smaller than the allowable upper limit of payment on the card in the case that the amount of money of payment on the card is limited to this allowable upper limit and increasing the frequency in use per card to reduce the frequency in running-out of the card. CONSTITUTION:A commodity price calculating part 2 totalizes prices of one or plural simultaneously purchased articles, and a card read part 7 reads information of the balance or the like from a prepaid card presented at the time of adjustment; and if the read prepaid card requests the allowable upper limit of payment on the card, a new balance calculating part 4 divides the money for purchase of all of the articles into a large amount money part and a fractional money part smaller than the allowable upper limit of payment on the card based on the allowable upper limit of payment on the card, which is set in the prepaid card or a device, and the balance read from the prepaid card and subtracts the fractional money from the old balance to calculate the new balance, and a card information update part 5 writes the calculated new balance in the prepaid card.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a processing device for paying for a product purchase price by using a prepaid card (prepaid card).

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Prepaid cards are sold in advance in cash, and the remaining amount information is deducted starting from the initial issuance amount according to the purchase of merchandise, with the advantage that no change is required to be carried around. Widely used.

By the way, in the conventional general prepaid card, the purchase price of the product is preferentially deducted from the balance of the card, and when the prepaid card has a sufficient balance, the purchase price of the product is paid. The entire amount was withdrawn from the card, and when there was not enough remaining amount, the remaining amount of the card was applied to part of the product price, and the shortfall was paid in cash or paid with an additional card.

[0004]

As described above, in the conventional prepaid card, the remaining amount of the card is preferentially withdrawn, and the following problems have been pointed out. Not only low-priced prepaid cards, but also high-priced prepaid cards are currently used up once or several times for the purchase of high-priced products, and the frequency of replacement of prepaid cards increases. The purchase is complicated. Prepaid cards often have a residual balance, which can be complicated by the need for coins when paying for the shortage of the product price in cash. For example, even if the product price is a good number, if the remaining amount is a fraction, the amount paid in cash becomes a fraction. You'll have to buy more prepaid cards to escape your coins. Generally, the original convenience of the prepaid card, which aims to simplify the processing by reducing the handling of coins on both the selling side and the buying side when paying for the product, is lost, and the processing is rather complicated. Is increasing.

The present invention has been proposed in view of the above points, and an object of the present invention is to provide a prepaid card processing device which can take advantage of the original advantages of the prepaid card.

[0006]

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the present invention has a product price calculation unit for summing the prices of one or a plurality of products purchased at the same time, and a balance from a prepaid card submitted at the time of payment. If the card reading unit that reads information such as the above, and the prepaid card that has been read out demands the upper limit of the card withdrawal amount, the maximum amount of the card withdrawal on the card or the upper limit of the card withdrawal amount set in the device Based on the balance read from the prepaid card, the entire product purchase price is divided into a high price part and a fractional price part less than the maximum amount that can be deducted from the card, and the new balance is calculated by subtracting the fractional price from the old balance. An arithmetic unit and a card information updating unit for writing the calculated new balance on a prepaid card are provided.

That is, according to the present invention, it is possible to add a limit to the prepaid card by the upper limit of the card withdrawable amount, and when the limit is added, the withdrawal amount is limited to a fractional amount less than the upper limit of the card withdrawable amount. As a result, the number of times of use per card is increased, and the frequency of card exhaustion is reduced.

[0008]

In the prepaid card processing device of the present invention,
The product price calculation unit totals the prices of one or more products purchased at the same time, the card reading unit reads the information such as the balance from the prepaid card submitted at the time of settlement, and the new balance calculation unit reads the prepaid card Is a request for the maximum card withdrawal amount, the total purchase price of the product based on the maximum withdrawable amount on the card or the maximum withdrawable amount set in the device and the balance read from the prepaid card. Is divided into a high-priced portion and a fractional portion that is less than the card withdrawal limit, the fractional portion is subtracted from the old balance to calculate a new balance, and the card information update section writes the calculated new balance to the prepaid card. .

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of a data format of a prepaid card used in the prepaid card processing device of the present invention. As will be described later, the prepaid card processing device of the present invention can handle a conventional prepaid card of a normal data format.

In FIG. 1, as a data format D, a header code a indicating the beginning of the data, an issue amount b indicating the amount of money when the prepaid card is issued, and a card indicating the upper limit value that can be settled by the prepaid card An upper limit c for withdrawal and an upper limit flag d for indicating whether or not this prepaid card requires an upper limit for card withdrawal,
A balance e indicating the current card balance is included. Note that the card withdrawable upper limit amount c may be omitted when the upper limit amount is set on the processing device side as described later.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the prepaid card processing device of the present invention.

In FIG. 2, the present embodiment has a product price input section 1 for inputting the prices of individual products at the time of product purchase, and the prices of one or a plurality of simultaneously purchased products input from the product price input section 1. The product price calculation unit 2 that sums up the product price, the purchase price storage unit 3 that stores the product price totaled by the product price calculation unit 2, the reader / writer unit 6 that reads and writes the magnetic information of the prepaid card, and is submitted at the time of payment. A card reading unit 7 for reading information such as the remaining amount from the prepaid card by the reader / writer unit 6, and an upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8 for storing the upper limit amount and the upper limit flag of the card read out information read from the card, A balance storage unit 9 for storing the balance of the read information is provided.

The data format D shown in FIG.
A table setting unit 10 for setting a table having the upper limit of card withdrawal amount as a configuration for setting the upper limit of card withdrawable amount in the card processing device without using the upper limit amount of card withdrawable c. An upper limit amount table storage unit 11 that stores the contents of the table can be provided.

Further, from the contents of the upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8, when the read prepaid card requests the upper limit for card withdrawal, the card on the card stored in the upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8 Based on the maximum withdrawable amount or the maximum withdrawable card amount set in the device stored in the maximum amount table storage unit 11 and the remaining amount read from the prepaid card stored in the remaining amount storage unit 9, the purchase price storage unit 3 A new balance calculation unit 4 that calculates the new balance by subtracting the fractional charge from the old balance and dividing the total product purchase price stored in There is provided a card information updating unit 5 for writing the new balance left over to the prepaid card by the reader / writer unit 6.

The operation of the above embodiment will be described below.

First, the issuer of the prepaid card issues the card in the data format as shown in FIG. 1 when giving the card withdrawable upper limit to the prepaid card issued by itself. The upper limit flag d is activated, and the card withdrawable upper limit amount c is set. In addition, when setting the upper limit of the card withdrawal amount on the card processing device side, the table setting unit 1
The amount is set by 0, and the upper limit amount table storage unit 1
Store it in 1. For example, "100 yen" is set as the upper limit of the card withdrawal amount.

On the other hand, when a customer purchases a product,
At the time of payment, the price of each product is input from the product price input unit 1. The prices of these products are calculated by the product price calculation unit 2
Are summed up, and are stored and held by the purchase price storage unit 3.

When the customer presents the prepaid card at the time of payment and the prepaid card is inserted into the reader / writer unit 6 either by the customer or by the operation of a store clerk, the card reading unit 7 displays the remaining amount on the card. The information (magnetic information) is read, and the upper limit flag and the upper limit amount of card withdrawal are stored in the upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8,
The balance is stored in the balance storage unit 9.

Next, the new balance calculation unit 4 stores it in the purchase price storage unit 3 when the upper limit flag of the upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8 indicates that the prepaid card requires the upper limit of card withdrawal. Considering the card remaining amount read by the card reading unit 7 out of the total amount of the product price that is stored, less than the maximum card withdrawal amount stored in the upper limit amount / flag storage unit 8 or the upper limit amount table storage unit 11 The fractional part of is calculated, and the value obtained by subtracting the fractional amount from the card balance is used as the new balance. For example, assuming that the card balance is "500 yen" and the total product price is "1599 yen", the fraction is "99 yen", and the new balance after deducting this is "401 yen". In this case, the customer can use the cash or a large amount of prepaid card to pay the remaining "15" of the total product price.
"00 yen" is collected. In addition, for a normal prepaid card that does not require an upper limit for card withdrawal, the remaining amount is calculated so that the card can be withdrawn preferentially as long as the remaining amount permits.

Next, the new balance calculated by the new balance calculation unit 4 is recorded on the prepaid card by the reader / writer unit 6 via the card information update unit 5, and the prepaid card is ejected.

Next, FIG. 3 shows an example of a hardware configuration for realizing the embodiment shown in FIG.

That is, the POS register 12 that adds up the prices of purchased products and records sales, and the communication port 1
4, a CPU 15, a ROM 16, a RAM 17, a writing / reading circuit 18, a reader / writer control circuit 19, and a card terminal 13 provided with a reader / writer unit 20, and a product price input unit 1 and a product price calculation unit in FIG. 2 and the table setting unit 10 are realized as the function of the POS register 12, and the subsequent blocks are realized as the function of the card terminal machine 13.

In FIG. 3, the input of the price of each product and the sum of the prices at the time of settlement are performed by the POS register 12, and the total amount is transmitted to the card terminal 13 side and taken in by the communication port 14. Be done. Also,
You can also set the maximum amount that can be withdrawn by the POS register 1
2 and the value is sent to the card terminal 13 side.

The operation of the CPU 15 of the card terminal 13 is controlled by a control program stored in the ROM 16.
The data sent from the POS register 12 side is appropriately stored in the RAM 17. That is, the RAM 17 functions as the purchase price storage unit 3, the upper limit amount table storage unit 11 and the like in FIG.

On the other hand, the reader / writer unit 20 is a CPU
Under the control of 15, the reading / writing of data is controlled by the reader / writer control circuit 19, and the actual reading / writing is performed.
Writing is performed by the writing / reading circuit 18.

[0027]

As described above, the prepaid card processing device of the present invention has the following effects. Since the amount deducted in one settlement is a small fraction, the number of times that one prepaid card can be used increases (for example, the maximum amount that can be deducted from a card is set to 100 yen for a 10,000 yen prepaid card). In that case, it can be used at least 100 times.) Therefore, it is not necessary to buy a new one every time, and the trouble of purchasing can be reduced. Only the fractional part of the product price will be settled with a prepaid card, and the remaining good price will be paid with cash or a large amount of prepaid card, so it is not necessary for both the selling side and the buying side to handle small change. Eliminates the need to buy additional prepaid cards to escape coins as in the past. Since it can be used together with the conventional prepaid card, it is possible to eliminate the confusion associated with the change of the payment method. In general, it is possible to regain the original convenience of the prepaid card that simplifies the processing by reducing the time and effort for handling coins on both the selling side and the buying side when paying for a product.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of a data format of a prepaid card used in a prepaid card processing device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram showing an embodiment of a prepaid card processing device of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a hardware configuration for realizing the embodiment of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 D …… Data format a …… Header code b …… Issue amount c …… Card maximum deductible amount d …… Upper limit flag e …… Remaining amount 1 …… Product price input unit 2 …… Product price calculation unit 3 …… Purchase Price storage unit 4 …… New balance calculation unit 5 …… Card information updating unit 6 …… Reader / writer unit 7 …… Card reading unit 8 …… Upper limit / flag storage unit 9 …… Remaining amount storage unit 10… Table setting unit 11 ... Upper limit table storage unit 12 ... POS register 13 ... Card terminal 14 ... Communication port 15 ... CPU 16 ... ROM 17 ... RAM 18 ... Writing / reading circuit 19 ... Reader / writer control circuit 20 ... Reader / writer unit

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Internal reference number FI Technical display location G07F 7/08 G07F 7/08 L

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A product price calculation unit that sums the prices of one or more products purchased at the same time, a card reading unit that reads information such as the balance from the prepaid card submitted at the time of settlement, and a prepaid card that has been read. Is a request for the maximum card withdrawal amount, the total purchase price of the product based on the maximum withdrawable amount on the card or the maximum withdrawable amount set in the device and the balance read from the prepaid card. Is divided into a high-priced portion and a fractional portion that is less than the maximum amount that can be deducted from the card, and a new balance calculation unit that calculates the new balance by subtracting the fractional charge from the old balance and writes the calculated new balance on the prepaid card A prepaid card processing device comprising a card information updating unit.