KR20070063068A - Method for cash-back service in a cash-back system - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for providing a cash-back service in a cash-back system is provided to apply cash-back to a payment price in real-time, reflect a return amount to the payment price by calculating the return amount for the payment price settled through an event such as lottery, and calculate the return amount for the paid amount. A main server registers a unit amount and a cash-back rate when a member shop is registered. A member shop terminal transmits the payment price and member shop information to the main server in response to a payment request of a customer(220). The main server assigns a lottery chance to the customer as many as the quotient of the payment price by the unit amount. The main server determines ranking of each lottery change. The return amount corresponding to the determination ranking is calculated by considering the cash-back rate and is transmitted to the member shop terminal(230). The member shop terminal pays cash of point corresponding to the returned amount to the customer(240).

Description

Cache-back service in cache-back system {METHOD FOR CASH-BACK SERVICE IN A CASH-BACK SYSTEM}

1 is a diagram illustrating a cache-back system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

2 illustrates signaling for cache-back in a cache-back system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3 is a diagram illustrating a control flow for registering an affiliated store in a main server according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

4 is a diagram illustrating a control flow performed by a terminal for a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

5 is a diagram illustrating a control flow performed by a server for a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

6 is a diagram illustrating an example of determining a refund amount for each rank by a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

The present invention relates to a method of cache-backing to a customer in real time a certain percentage of profits generated at a merchant for a payment amount in a cache-back system.

With the rapid economic growth and changing consciousness, consumer's needs are diversifying year after year. According to the consumer's disposition, the retailers are also showing a variety of products.

However, it is true that the sales of small stores are rapidly decreasing due to the appearance of large discount stores such as large discount marts, home shopping, and internet shopping malls. In addition, the company is striving to secure fixed customers among large discount stores amid intense competition among vendors.

As a part of this, a certain point is given according to the purchase, if you earn more than a certain point, aka points earning card that pays a product or discount according to the accumulated points will be a typical example. In the case of such a credit card is widely used from small small stores to large discount stores.

However, membership is essential to obtain certain points defined by the store. In addition, since a certain number of purchases or a certain amount of purchases must be made, it is difficult to collect points for most non-fixed customers. The reality is that most of them give up before their customers fill up their points.

In addition, as point-of-sale stores that use loyalty cards are becoming more common and customers' needs diversify, it is difficult to maintain fixed customers, unlike the early days when floating customers were established as fixed customers of the stores to collect points.

Referring to the above points, the general point earning card is no longer a differentiated sales strategy of the store, a more direct and efficient strategy is urgently required.

The present invention provides a cache-back system and a cache-back method using the same to apply the cache-back in real time to the payment amount in order to satisfy the above-described needs.

In addition, the present invention provides a cache-back system and a cache-back method using the same, which calculates a refund amount for the amount paid through an event and reflects it on the settlement amount.

The present invention also provides a cache-back system and a cache-back method using the same, which calculates and refunds the refunded amount to the paid amount in real time.

In view of achieving the above, the present invention, in the cache-back system, registers the unit price and the cache-back rate at the time of registering the merchant to the main server, the terminal in response to the payment request from the customer and the payment amount Send information about the merchant to the main server, give the lottery opportunity as much as the share of the payment amount divided by the unit price in the main server, determine the rank by the lottery opportunity, and consider the cache-back rate Calculating a refund amount corresponding to the determined ranking and transmitting it to the terminal, and the terminal pays the refund amount received from the main server in cash or points to the customer, where the ranking is won through a single event. Is based on information generated as random numbers from integers within the range determined by the number of customers (k), i. It proposes a back-service method - to determine the cache.

Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description will be presented a representative embodiment in the present invention to achieve the above technical problem. And other embodiments that can be presented with the present invention are replaced by the description in the configuration of the present invention.

In the present invention, a cache-back system for providing a cache-back service in real time for a payment amount requested by a customer and a method for providing a cache-back service using the same are provided.

To this end, an operation of the terminal for transmitting the information on the payment amount for providing the cache-back service and providing the cache-back service in real time by the corresponding cache-back information should be specifically disclosed. And the operation of the main server that can provide cache-back information in response to the information on the payment amount from the terminal should be specifically disclosed. In addition, a specific method of determining cache-back information on a corresponding payment amount to provide a cache-back service should be disclosed. The cache-back information may be determined by determining the rank and calculating a refund amount corresponding to the payment amount by the determined rank.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a diagram illustrating a cache-back system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. Cache-back system according to an embodiment of the present invention is a plurality of terminals (S500, S501, S502, S503), Internet network (S400), firewall (S300), main server (Main SERVER) (S100), database ( DBMS) S200 and other SERVERs S101 and S102.

The plurality of terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 are connected to the Internet network S400. And the plurality of terminals (S500, S501, S502, S503) is installed in the affiliated stores, marts, etc. collectively refers to the device for calculating the payment amount by the operation of the seller. In the following description, it is assumed that the terminal installed in the affiliated store. The main server S100, the database S200, and other servers S101 and S102 are connected to the Internet network S400 through the firewall S300.

Referring to FIG. 1, the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 are installed for each affiliate store and perform a user authentication procedure with the main server S100. Through the user authentication procedure, it is checked through the main server S100 whether a person who attempts to access the cache-back system at an actual merchant is a valid user. This user authentication procedure is performed to prevent an invalid person from accessing the cache-back system at the merchant.

In addition, the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 may include a personal computer (PC) in which a barcode reader, an optical scanner, a card reader, and the like are coupled to a checkout counter. This is commonly referred to as an Electronic Cash Register (ECR).

When the payment amount is input, the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 transmit the payment amount to the main server S100 together with information about the affiliate store. And the cache-back information corresponding to the payment amount is received from the main server (S100). The cache-back information may be accumulated in the settlement amount in real time or accumulated as a predetermined point. In addition, it may be issued in the form of a separate receipt, and may be implemented to be refunded to a point or cash promised through a procedure such as membership registration later.

The cache-back information may be rank information or a refund amount that may be given for a purchased product. When the cache-back information is rank information, the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 require a memory for storing a refund amount corresponding to each rank in the form of a table. However, if the cache-back information is a refund amount, the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 need not have a separate configuration for calculating a refund amount. In the following description, it is assumed that a refund amount is provided as cache-back information.

As described above, the operations of the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 may be variously implemented according to the type of cache-back information provided from the main server S100.

The main server S100 manages a unit price and a cache-back rate contracted for each affiliate store. In addition, it manages cache-back information corresponding to an equal number. Therefore, when the main server S100 receives the information on the affiliated store and the payment amount from the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503, the main server S100 takes into account the unit price and the cache-back rate managed in response to the affiliated store. The winner is decided by drawing. The cache-back information managed according to the determined rank number is transmitted to the affiliated store.

The main server S100 uses a lottery method for determining the ranking. In other words, the winning rank is determined through one event, and the winning rank is randomly selected from among the winning ranks. After all the winning ranks have been selected, a new event is started. A detailed description of the ranking determination method will be given later.

Thereafter, the main server S100 checks the refund amount managed in correspondence with the number of units and transmits it as cache-back information. To this end, the main server (S100) has to manage separate data for calculating the refund amount. The separate data may be information about a refund amount corresponding to each rank for each unit amount.

The main server S100 accesses the database S200 as necessary to generate cache-back information. That is, if the cache-back information is the refund amount, the main server S100 may inquire the database S200 of the refund amount corresponding to the equal number determined according to the unit price. In response, the database S200 retrieves internal data, calculates a refund amount corresponding to the inquiry, and provides the same to the main server S100.

As can be seen from the foregoing, the database S200 stores various data necessary for determining cache-back information in the main server S100. Data stored in the database S200 may vary depending on what information is used as cache-back information.

The other servers S101 and S102 may be mail servers, name servers, backup servers, or the like.

Finally, the firewall (S300) is a system having a function such as a firewall of a building on the boundary of the external internet network (S400) and the dedicated communication network inside the organization, so that all information flows only through the installation of a router or an application gateway. This plays an important role in security.

Meanwhile, in the data transmission / reception between the terminals S500, S501, S502, and S503 and the main server S100, an encryption algorithm is applied to maintain user confidentiality and confidentiality and integrity of transmission / reception data. Cryptographic algorithms that can be applied here are RSA, MD5, and triple DES.

2 is a diagram illustrating signaling for cache-back in a cache-back system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 2, the customer requests a payment to the terminal in step 210. The seller inputs the payment amount using an input device (bar code reader, button, etc.) connected to the terminal. In step 220, the terminal transmits the input payment amount and information about the affiliated store to the main server.

The main server checks the unit amount and the cache-back rate corresponding to the affiliated store. Then, the number of draws considering the unit amount is determined in response to the settlement amount. For example, if the payment amount is 13,000 won and the unit amount is 5,000, the number of draws is determined twice. In other words, the share divided by the payment amount is determined by the number of draws. Thereafter, the main server determines the rank through the number of draws. And the refund amount is calculated by applying the above-mentioned cash-back rate for each determined rank. The refund amount calculated for each rank is summed. In step 230, the main server transmits the sum of the refund amount to the terminal as cache-back information. If the customer is registered as a member, the main server may transmit the cache-back information to a personal terminal such as a mobile phone.

The terminal enables the customer to check the cache-back information provided from the main server in step 240. This may be a method of issuing a receipt reflecting the refund amount or a separate point earning receipt.

Preferably, if the probability of payment decline is low, such as meals, the refund amount is reflected in the payment amount in real time, and if the probability of payment decline is high, such as a product, a separate point accumulation or a separate cash-back receipt is issued. Do it. In this case, if the paying customer is a member, it will be desirable to accumulate points using the membership card. If the paying customer is a non-member, it may be desirable to issue a separate receipt so that the cash-back is possible later.

3 is a diagram illustrating a control flow for registering an affiliated store in a main server according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, the main server monitors whether there is a merchant registration request in step 310. The affiliated store registration request may be made by a store owner wishing to register an affiliated store through the internet network or requested by an administrator of the main server. In the present invention, both cases described above are considered.

When the affiliated store request is received, the main server receives affiliated store information from an internet network or an administrator in step 312. The affiliated store information may be information for authentication, a contact point, an address, and the like. When the affiliated store information is input, the main server determines a unit price and a cache-back rate for the cache-back service in step 314. The unit amount and the cash-back rate may be selected at the request of the merchant subscriber.

When the unit price and the cache-back rate are determined, the main server registers the affiliate store information, the unit price and the cache-back rate in the database in step 316.

4 is a diagram illustrating a control flow performed by a terminal for a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 4, the terminal monitors whether there is a payment request in step 410. The payment request may be determined based on input of a payment amount. If there is a payment request, the terminal calculates a payment amount in step 412, and requests a cache-back for the payment amount in step 414. Information about the merchant and the payment amount for the cache-back request is provided to the main server.

In step 416, the terminal monitors whether the cache-back information on the payment amount is received from the main server. If the cache-back information is not received until the time set in step 418 elapses, the terminal re-requests the cache-back in step 420.

When the cache-back information is received from the main server, the terminal performs an operation for cache-back by the cache-back information in step 422. The operation for the cache-back can be proposed in three ways. First, it may be suggested to subtract the refunded amount from the settlement amount, and to claim the refunded amount of the refunded amount to the customer. Second, it may be proposed to earn points corresponding to the refunded amount on the membership card. Can be. Finally, a method of issuing a cash-back receipt corresponding to the refund amount may be proposed.

The terminal performs an operation for cache-back by one of the three methods described above.

5 is a diagram illustrating a control flow performed by a main server for a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 5, in operation 510, the main server checks whether a cache-back request from a terminal is received. The cache-back request corresponds to the receipt of payment information and information about the merchant.

In operation 512, the main server reads the unit price and the cache-back rate managed in correspondence with the affiliate store. The unit amount and the cache-back rate are information set at the time of registering a merchant for a cache-back service.

In operation 514, the main server determines the number of draws in consideration of the settlement amount and the unit amount, draws the number of draws as much as the determined number of draws, and determines the rank by each draw. A detailed ranking determination method through the lottery will be described later.

The main server calculates the cache-back information in step 516 when the number of the number of draws is determined. In other words, the amount of cash to be cached back for each rank is determined in consideration of the previously read unit amount and the cash-back rate. When refund amounts corresponding to all ranks are determined, the sums are summed to calculate final cache-back information.

In operation 518, the main server stores the cache-back information in response to the payment amount and information of the customer. In operation 520, the main server transmits the cache-back information to the terminal.

In the above description, an embodiment made by a payment request from a merchant has been described. On the other hand, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the above-described embodiments of the present invention can be equally applied to purchasing an item through an internet shopping mall and paying the same.

Rank determination method

Hereinafter, a method of determining the rank number for each lottery number considering the settlement amount and the unit amount in the cache-back service according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail.

In the present invention, the customer can check the refund amount by the same number and cash-back at the same time with the calculation to be automatically credited or discounted on the membership card. In this case, in order to prevent the customer from predicting the next winning ranking, it is necessary to generate a random number so that the ranking can be determined regardless of the purchase order.

To do this, you must first determine the total number of prizes you can win in a single event. For example, if a cache-back is designed for 127 customers in one event, the random number allows one of integers from 1 to 127 to occur.

And the random number that occurred once corresponds to the already winning number. Therefore, if a random number corresponding to the winning number already occurs, another random number is generated. In order to check whether the generated random number corresponds to the already-winned number, the generated random number may be managed through a memory.

The random number generation method refers to a random number that selects any one with an equal probability among N consecutive numbers in N numbers. For example, in decimal 127, the first digit, 1, is taken with a tenth probability, and 2 and 7 are each obtained with a tenth probability.

Meanwhile, the random number may be implemented by using an arbitrary random function function using a payment order. For example, a mathematical expression having one variable is proposed and the payment order is used as the variable. In this case, the above equation may not be easily predictable. In addition, the equation should be an integer between 1 and 127 can be inputted to output an integer between 1 and 127.

As another example, an equal number corresponding to each result obtained by substituting an integer between 1 and 127 may be implemented as a table in advance. In this case, the rank should not be determined in proportion to the order of payment.

How to determine your refund amount

Hereinafter, a method of determining a refund amount by rank for a cache-back service according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail.

The cache-back service proposed in the embodiment of the present invention is proposed as a method of returning a part of the profit generated at the affiliate store. This requires determining the total amount of refunds to be returned to customers in a single event per unit amount or merchant. The amount to be refunded to the customer may be determined in consideration of the unit amount of the product, or may be determined in consideration of the overall profits obtained from the merchant for one event. The amount of refund to be distributed by rank should be determined based on the total amount of refund.

The easiest way to do this is to divide the total refund amount by the total number of ranks, to determine the amount of refund to be distributed by rank. This method would be a form in which the refund amount of each rank is divided among the customers constituting each rank.

Generalizing this may be represented by Equation 1 below.

는 x보다 작은 정수이다.Where P _{CASH -BACK} is the refund amount for each customer whose rank is n, T _P is the total refund amount, N is the total number of ranks in one event, and C _n is the total number of customers who can be given rank n. ,

Is an integer less than x.

When the refund amount is determined for each customer according to Equation 1, a part of the total refund amount remains. This is called a surplus refund amount. The surplus refund amount is redistributed at an appropriate rate to the refund amount calculated for the customers who win the ranks N-1 and N.

For example, assuming that the total refund amount (T _P ) is 1,627,886 and the total number of branches (N) of the rank is 7, the refund amount (P _CASH-) for the first-winning customer with C _n is 1 _BACK ), and for each of the second-placed winning customers with C _n = 2, the repayment amount (P _CASH-BACK ) is 116,277 won.

Another method of determining the refund amount is to use a cash-back point value assigned to each winning customer.

To do this, cache-back point values are equally assigned to all winning customers. This is called a cache-back point value of 1. The cache-back point value of 1 may be generalized as shown in Equation 2 below.

는 x보다 작은 정수이다.Where SP _n is the cache-back point value of 1 calculated for the customer who wins the rank n, 2 ^N -1 is the total number of winners, C _n is the total number of customers who win the rank n,

Is an integer less than x.

As can be seen in Equation 2, the cash-back point value that can be given to each of the winning customers is calculated by an integer value smaller than the quotient of the number of astronomical winning customers divided by the total number of customers in the ranking. can do.

However, when the cash-back point value of 1 is calculated by Equation 2, a part of the total refund amount is generated as a surplus refund amount. Thus, the value of the one-person cache-back point is adjusted such that 80% of the surplus refund amount is redistributed to customers who win the rank N, and 20% is redistributed to the customers who win the rank N-1.

The total cache-back point value for each ranking may be generalized by Equation 3 below.

Where LP _n is the total cache-back point value calculated for rank n, SP _n is the cache-back point value equal to 1 calculated for customers winning rank n, and C _n is the total number of customers winning rank n to be.

As an example, assuming that the total number of branches (N) of the rank in a single event is 7, the cache-back point value (SP _n ) of 1 calculated by Equation 2 and the total cache calculated by the rank -Shows back point value.

Rank Winning Customers 1 Cash Back-point Total cache-back Total cache-back by rank One One 127 7 127 2 2 63 14 126 3 4 31 28 124 4 8 15 56 120 5 16 7 112 112 6 32 3 (+0.75) 224 120 7 64 1 (+1.5) 448 160 system 127 247 (249.25) 889 889

When the cache-back point value of 1 for the cache-back service is calculated as described above, a refund amount for each winning customer may be calculated using the value. Generalizing the method for calculating the refund amount can be represented by the following Equation 4.

는 x보다 작은 정수이다.Where P _{CASH -BACK} is the refund amount for each customer whose rank is n, U _{CASH -BACK} is the unit refund amount, N is the total number of ranks in one event, and SP _n is calculated for the customer who won the rank n. 1 cache-back point value,

Is an integer less than x.

6 is a diagram illustrating an example of determining a refund amount for each rank by a cache-back service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 6, it is assumed that the unit refund amount of the product is 168,000 won, and the refund amount (U _{CASH -BACK} ) is 12,818 won. And the total number of branches (N) of the rank in one event is 7.

First, when the refund amount for the first place is calculated using the above assumptions, 127 is calculated as the cache-back point value SP ₁ that is 1 by Equation (3). If the assumption values and the calculated cache-back point value SP ₁ are applied to Equation 4, the refund amount for the first prize is 232,555 won.

Next, when the refund amount for the second place is calculated using the above assumptions, 63 is calculated as the cache-back point value SP ₂ that is 1 by Equation (3). If the assumption values and the calculated cache-back point value SP ₂ are applied to Equation 4, the refund amount for the second place is 115,361 won.

Since the refund amount for the remaining ranking may also be calculated by the same procedure as described above, a detailed description will be omitted, and the refund amount calculated for each ranking will be as shown in FIG. 6. In the refund amount by rank shown in FIG. 6, the refund amount corresponding to the rank N-1 and the rank N may be calculated by redistributing the surplus refund amount. In other words, the refund amount corresponding to the rank N-1 is calculated by SP + (LP * 0.2 / PN), and the refund amount corresponding to the rank N is calculated by SP + (LP * 0.8 / PN).

As described above, when the first event is received after the start of a new event in the state that the refund amount by rank is calculated, the main server receives the rank information corresponding to the first place and the cash-back of 232,555 won to the corresponding terminal. Send the information. Thereafter, the main server also transmits the cache-back information corresponding to the rank number to the corresponding terminal with respect to the received product information.

On the other hand, in order to implement an optimal cache-back system, it is desirable to properly adjust the total amount of refunds as well as the total number of ranks in one event and the number of customers who can win in one event.

As described above, in the present invention, by providing a cache-back system and a cache-back method in which cache-back is performed in real time, it is possible to increase a customer's purchase motivation, thereby securing a fixed customer without additional promotion. In addition, it can lead to voluntary promotion of customers. In addition, fixed customers and mass sales can generate more profits for both merchants and consumers.

Claims (4)

In the cache-back system to provide a cache-back service in real time, Register a unit price and a cache-back rate at the time of registering the merchant with the main server; In response to a payment request from a customer, the terminal transmits information regarding the payment amount and the affiliated store to the main server; Giving a drawing opportunity in the main server as much as the share divided by the payment amount; Determine a ranking for each draw opportunity; Calculating a refund amount corresponding to the determined rank in consideration of the cache-back rate and transmitting it to the terminal; The terminal pays cash or points to the customer with the refund amount received from the main server; Wherein the rank is determined by information generated as a random number from integers within a range determined by the number of customers (k) winning through one event, that is, a range of 1 or more and k or less. 2. The cache-back service method according to claim 1, wherein the equal number won in the event is managed by a management table, and a new random number is generated if the generated random number is already managed by the management table. The cache-back service method of claim 2, wherein the plurality of affiliate stores having the same unit price and the cache-back rate have a cache-back service by the same event. The method of claim 3, wherein when the customer is a registered member, the main server transmits information on the ranking and the refund amount due to the event to the mobile terminal of the customer.

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