WO2017085515A1

WO2017085515A1 - Off-line transaction method and system

Info

Publication number: WO2017085515A1
Application number: PCT/GB2016/053615
Authority: WO
Inventors: David Sharples; Vishal Sharma
Original assignee: Barclays Bank Plc
Priority date: 2015-11-19
Filing date: 2016-11-21
Publication date: 2017-05-26
Also published as: GB2544511A; GB201520385D0

Abstract

In a transit system, online network connectivity may not be available during travel. The location at the transit station of a customer's mobile device (1) having a mobile application (1a) associated with a customer account is detected and a currently applicable account limit of the customer account is communicated to a merchant terminal (2). During travel, the customer may authorize an offline payment transaction with the merchant terminal (2) against the customer account. The merchant terminal (2) checks the payment transaction against the account limit and accepting the payment transaction if it does not exceeds the account limit. When online connectivity is available, the merchant terminal (2) initiates processing of the accepted transaction with an online transaction processing system (6).

Description

Off-line Transaction Method and System

Field of the Invention

[0001] This invention relates to a transaction processing method and system, particularly for processing payment transactions in an offline mode. Background of the Invention

[0002] In a conventional online payment transaction system, a transaction requested by a customer may be authorized based on customer account information, such as the balance or spending limits on the account. The transaction may be authorized using a 'chip and pin' card reader or a mobile electronic device running a payment application. However, in some environments such as transport or transit environments, network connectivity may be unavailable and the transaction must either be declined, or processed offline without reference to the currently applicable account balance or other spending limits. This runs the risk that a transaction may be allowed that would exceed the account balance or spending limits.

[0003] WO-A-2014/053914 (Guestlogix) discloses a transaction processing system in a mobile retail environment in which, as part of a flight booking process, the customer authorizes an amount that can be charged to an account during the flight. The customer may then make purchases up to the authorized amount during the flight, using a mobile application. However, a problem with this approach is that the amount must be authorized well in advance of the actual flight, and must be held so that the amount is not available for other purchases. The customer must estimate the amount that will be needed during the flight, and cannot exceed the pre-authorised amount.

Statements of the Invention

[0004] According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a system for processing offline payment transactions by automatically detecting that a customer's mobile device is about to enter an offline environment in which online network connectivity may not be available. In response to this detection, a currently applicable account limit of a corresponding customer account is communicated to a merchant terminal for use in the offline environment. In the offline environment, the customer may authorize an offline payment transaction with the merchant terminal. The merchant terminal checks the payment transaction against the account limit and accepts the payment transaction if it does not exceed the account limit. When online connectivity is available, the merchant terminal initiates processing of the accepted transaction with an online transaction processing system.

[0005] Advantageously, this method may ensure that the account limit applicable at the time that the customer enters the offline environment is available for offline transactions during travel. The account may be locked for online transactions while the customer's mobile device is offline, to ensure that the account limit is not exceeded once the offline transactions are processed.

[0006] The detection of the customer's mobile device entering an offline environment may be performed by automatically detecting the location of the customer's mobile device. The customer's mobile device may run an application that performs or assists with the automatic location detection. The application may be a payment application associated with the customer's account. This payment application may be used to authorize the offline payment transactions, for example by communication directly with the merchant terminal.

[0007] The merchant terminal may adjust the account limit according to the value of the offline payment transaction made against the corresponding account, so that the adjusted account limit may be applied to any subsequent offline transaction.

[0008] The offline environment may comprise a transit system or vehicle such as an aircraft.

[0009] According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of processing a mobile payment transaction in a transit system in which a customer may travel from a transit station with online network connectivity, online connectivity not being available during travel on the transit system, the method comprising: detecting the location at the transit station of a customer's mobile device having a mobile application associated with a customer account; and in response to said detection, communicating a currently applicable account limit of the customer account to a merchant terminal; during travel of the customer on the transit system, authorizing a payment transaction with the merchant terminal against the customer account, checking the payment transaction against the account limit at the merchant terminal and accepting the payment transaction if it does not exceeds the account limit; and when online connectivity becomes available, initiating processing of the accepted transaction by the merchant terminal with an online transaction processing system.

[0010] Other aspects of the invention include a system arranged to perform the above method. Brief Description of the Drawings

[0011] There now follows, by way of example only, a detailed description of embodiments of the present invention, with references to the figures identified below.

Figure 1 is a block diagram showing the main components of a payment transaction system according to an embodiment of the invention.

Figure 2 is a flow diagram illustrating the main processing steps performed by the payment transaction system of Figure 1.

Figure 3 is a block diagram of an example of a mobile device for use in the embodiment.

Figure 4 is a block diagram of an example of a computer system for use in the embodiment.

Detailed Description of Embodiments of the Invention

Mobile Payment Transaction System

[0012] Figure 1 shows a mobile payment transaction system for implementing an off-line mobile payment transaction between a customer's mobile device 1 and a merchant terminal 2 according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, the customer's mobile device 1 may be any suitable mobile electronic device such as a cellular device, a smartphone, etc. that includes software and/or hardware components to communicate with other mobile devices over a wireless network 3 and to communicate over a direct wireless link with the merchant terminal 2, for example using Near-Field Communication (NFC) and/or Bluetooth ( TM).

[0013] The merchant terminal 2 is preferably a mobile electronic device, such as a tablet computer, that is capable of communication over the wireless network 3 and of wireless communication with the customer's mobile device 1. The merchant terminal 2 includes a merchant application 2a which provides payment transaction functionality as described below.

[0014] The customer's mobile device 1 runs a secure payment application la that enables the customer to authorize an online payment transaction in communication with a payment application gateway 4, which initiates the payment transaction via a transaction processing system 6. A customer account is associated with the secure payment application la, for example during a registration process in which the customer verifies that they are authorised to access the account, and the online payment transaction debits the associated customer account. The transaction processing system 6 may be of a conventional type, and will not be described further.

[0015] The payment application la is also able to authorize an offline payment transaction with the merchant terminal 2 over the direct wireless connection therebetween, as will be described in more detail below.

Off-line Payment Transaction Process

[0016] Figure 2 shows a computer-implemented payment transaction process of the present embodiment, using the customer's mobile device 1, in the context of an offline environment during which the customer's mobile device 1 and the merchant terminal 2 are offline and not able to access a wireless network. For ease of explanation, the offline environment will be described as a flight on an aircraft from a first airport to a second airport, but the embodiment is applicable to other transit systems in which network connectivity may be lost for at least part of the journey.

[0017] First, the customer having the customer's mobile device 1 arrives at the first airport. A wireless beacon 7, located at the first airport, periodically broadcasts a wireless beacon signal that is received by the customer's mobile device 1. The wireless beacon 7 may be an iBeacon ( TM), which broadcasts Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals. The wireless beacon signal includes data indicative of the first airport. Alternative wireless beacon signals include an SSID (service set identifier) broadcast over the wireless network 3 in the vicinity of the airport or other transit terminal.

[0018] At step SI, the customer's mobile device 1 receives the wireless beacon signal and the payment application la responds to the wireless beacon signal by initiating an offline payment mode. At step S2, the payment application la prompts the customer to confirm that the offline payment mode should be entered. If the customer confirms this, the payment application la communicates to the payment application gateway 4 that the offline payment mode should be entered for the corresponding customer. The payment application gateway 4 then retrieves the account balance of the associated customer account, from an account management system 8, and communicates this account balance to a merchant gateway 5, together with data identifying the associated customer or customer account. The merchant gateway 5 then routes this information to the merchant terminal 2, where it is stored in an offline database 2b at step S3. [0019] In this embodiment, the merchant terminal 2 is for use by cabin crew on the flight that the customer is scheduled to take. Hence, the merchant gateway 5 determines from flight information pertaining to the customer which merchant terminal 2 should receive the associated account information.

[0020] Preferably, once the customer has confirmed that offline payment mode should be initiated, the associated account is locked by the account management system 8 so as to prevent further online transactions during offline payment mode.

[0021] The flight then departs with the customer's mobile device 1 and the merchant terminal 2 onboard, which then lose connection to the wireless network 3 and go offline.

[0022] The customer may wish to make payments for goods or services purchased during the flight, in which case the customer may authorize an offline payment transaction via the mobile payment application la, at step S5. The merchant terminal 2 receives the transaction authorization via the direct wireless connection to the customer's mobile device 1. Alternatively, the customer may enter account details directly on the merchant terminal 2 in order to authorise the transaction.

[0023] The merchant terminal 2 then searches the offline database 2b for the account balance corresponding to the customer requesting the transaction. If this account balance is found, and the value of the current transaction is less than or equal to the account balance, then the transaction is accepted and confirmation is provided to the customer and/or the cabin crew so that the goods or services may be provided; otherwise, the transaction is declined (step S8). Details of the accepted transaction are stored in the offline database 2b (step S9), and the value of the associated account balance is reduced by the value of the accepted transaction. This reduced account balance is applied to a subsequent offline transaction by the same customer.

[0024] After the flight, the merchant terminal 2 connects to a wireless network at the second airport and sends the stored details of accepted transactions to the merchant gateway 5 (step S10), which processes the accepted transactions through the transaction processing system 6 and debits the associated amounts from the corresponding customer accounts.

[0025] When the customer's mobile device 1 goes online at the second airport, the payment application la may communicate with the payment application gateway 4 so as to exit offline mode and unlock the associated account so that further online transactions may be made by the payment application la. Alternatively, offline mode may be disabled in response to a communication from the merchant terminal 2, for example during step S10. Alternative Embodiments

[0026] Embodiments of the present invention are described herein by way of example only, and that various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the invention.

[0027] For example, it is not essential that the merchant terminal 2 is mobile in the sense of being hand portable. The merchant terminal 2 may be integrated with part of the transit system which has network connectivity at first and second stations, but may lose connectivity in transit.

[0028] The transit system may be an airline, a railway, a bus network, a ship or other transit system in which online connectivity may not be available during a least part of the period of travel. In some circumstances, network connectivity may still be available on board the aircraft, train or bus before travel begins, or even for some period during travel. Hence, it is not essential that the merchant terminal 2 should wait until the transit system has arrived at the second station before sending the stored details of accepted transactions to the merchant gateway 5.

[0029] Other means may be used to indicate automatically to the customer's mobile device 1 that it is in the vicinity of the first station. For example, the payment application la may periodically check location information available to the customer's mobile device 1, such as GPS or multilateration location information, or magnetic field-based location information such as described in EP-A-2615419 (IndoorAtlas).

[0030] Alternatively, the location of the customer's mobile device 1 may be checked by means external to the mobile device 1, such as a part of a network to which the mobile device 1 is connected. A message may then be sent to the payment application la to trigger the offline payment mode.

[0031] In an alternative embodiment, the offline mode is initiated in response to an expected outage of online connectivity, the outage not being related to any transit system. For example, the outage may be caused by scheduled maintenance of online connectivity, in a store or other environment. The beacon signal as described above may be transmitted before the expected outage. Mobile Device

[0032] The customer's mobile device 1 and/or the merchant terminal 2 may comprise a mobile device as shown in Figure 3, including a network interface 16 for communication with a wireless network such as wireless network 3, and a wireless link (e.g. Bluetooth, NFC) interface 17. The mobile device includes a processor 10 for running applications such as the payment application la and the merchant application 2a. Data 14, such as the offline database 2b, may be stored in memory 13. The customer may interact with the mobile device via an input device 18 and a display 11. Additional components (not shown) may be required, such as a microphone, a speaker, a camera, a magnetic flux detector and/or a GPS receiver etc., which are not shown.

Computer Systems

[0033] The systems described herein, such as the payment application gateway 4, merchant gateway 5, account management system 8 and transaction processing system 6, may be implemented by computer systems such as computer system 1000 as shown in Figure 4. Embodiments of the present invention may be implemented as programmable code for execution by such computer systems 1000. After reading this description, it will become apparent to a person skilled in the art how to implement the invention using other computer systems and/or computer architectures.

[0034] Computer system 1000 includes one or more processors, such as processor 1004. Processor 1004 may be any type of processor, including but not limited to a special purpose or a general-purpose digital signal processor. Processor 1004 is connected to a communication infrastructure 1006 (for example, a bus or network). Various software implementations are described in terms of this exemplary computer system. After reading this description, it will become apparent to a person skilled in the art how to implement the invention using other computer systems and/or computer architectures.

[0035] Computer system 1000 also includes a main memory 1008, preferably random access memory (RAM), and may also include a secondary memory 610. Secondary memory 1010 may include, for example, a hard disk drive 1012 and/or a removable storage drive 1014, representing a floppy disk drive, a magnetic tape drive, an optical disk drive, etc. Removable storage drive 1014 reads from and/or writes to a removable storage unit 1018 in a well-known manner. Removable storage unit 1018 represents a floppy disk, magnetic tape, optical disk, etc., which is read by and written to by removable storage drive 1014. As will be appreciated, removable storage unit 618 includes a computer usable storage medium having stored therein computer software and/or data.

[0036] In alternative implementations, secondary memory 1010 may include other similar means for allowing computer programs or other instructions to be loaded into computer system 1000. Such means may include, for example, a removable storage unit 1022 and an interface 1020. Examples of such means may include a program cartridge and cartridge interface (such as that previously found in video game devices), a removable memory chip (such as an EP OM, or PROM, or flash memory) and associated socket, and other removable storage units 1022 and interfaces 1020 which allow software and data to be transferred from removable storage unit 1022 to computer system 1000. Alternatively, the program may be executed and/or the data accessed from the removable storage unit 1022, using the processor 1004 of the computer system 1000.

[0037] Computer system 1000 may also include a communication interface 1024. Communication interface 1024 allows software and data to be transferred between computer system 1000 and external devices. Examples of communication interface 1024 may include a modem, a network interface (such as an Ethernet card), a communication port, a Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) slot and card, etc. Software and data transferred via communication interface 1024 are in the form of signals 1028, which may be electronic, electromagnetic, optical, or other signals capable of being received by communication interface 1024. These signals 1028 are provided to com munication interface 1024 via a communication path 1026. Communication path 1026 carries signals 1028 and may be implemented using wire or cable, fibre optics, a phone line, a wireless link, a cellular phone link, a radio frequency link, or any other suitable communication channel. For instance, communication path 1026 may be implemented using a combination of channels.

[0038] The terms "computer program medium" and "computer usable medium" are used generally to refer to media such as removable storage drive 1014, a hard disk installed in hard disk drive 1012, and signals 1028. These computer program products are means for providing software to computer system 1000. However, these terms may also include signals (such as electrical, optical or electromagnetic signals) that embody the computer program disclosed herein.

[0039] Computer programs (also called computer control logic) are stored in main memory 1008 and/or secondary memory 1010. Computer programs may also be received via communication interface 1024. Such computer programs, when executed, enable computer system 1000 to implement embodiments of the present invention as discussed herein. Accordingly, such computer programs represent controllers of computer system 1000. Where the embodiment is implemented using software, the software may be stored in a computer program product and loaded into computer system 1000 using removable storage drive 1014, hard disk drive 1012, or communication interface 1024, to provide some examples.

[0040] Alternative embodiments may be implemented as control logic in hardware, firmware, or software or any combination thereof.

Claims

1. A method of processing a mobile payment, comprising:

initiating an offline mode of a mobile application (la) on a customer's mobile device (1), the mobile application (la) being associated with a customer account;

in response to initiation of the offline mode, communicating a currently applicable account limit of the customer account to a merchant terminal (2); and

while the mobile application (la) is in the offline mode, authorizing a payment transaction with the merchant terminal (2) against the customer account, checking the payment transaction against the account limit at the merchant terminal (2) and accepting the payment transaction if the value of the transaction does not exceed the account limit.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the offline mode is initiated in response to detecting the presence of the mobile device (1) at a predetermined location.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the presence of the mobile device (1) at the predetermined location is detected by the mobile application (la).

4. The method of claim 2 or 3, wherein the predetermined location comprises a transit station.

5. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the offline mode is initiated in response to a wireless beacon signal received by the mobile device (1).

6. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the mobile application (la) communicates the initiation of the offline mode to a payment gateway (4) that communicates the currently applicable account limit of the customer account to a merchant terminal (2).

7. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the account limit is communicated via a merchant gateway (5) that identifies the merchant terminal (2) to which the account limit is communicated.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the merchant terminal (2) is identified based on information pertaining to the customer.

9. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the account limit comprises an account balance and the merchant terminal (2) stores the account balance and reduces the stored account balance according to the value of the accepted payment transaction.

10. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the payment transaction is authorised via a direct wireless connection between the customer's mobile device (1) and the merchant terminal (2).

11. The method of any preceding claim, including initiating processing of the accepted transaction by the merchant terminal (2) with an online transaction processing system (6), when online connectivity becomes available.

12. The method of any preceding claim, wherein the payment transaction is authorized using the mobile application (la).

13. The method of any preceding claim, including requesting authorization from the customer via the mobile application (la) prior to initiating the offline mode.

14. The method of any preceding claim, wherein online transactions with the customer account are inhibited when the currently applicable account limit is communicated to the merchant terminal (2).

15. The method of claim 14, wherein online transactions with the customer account are enabled when the offline mode is exited.

16. A mobile payment transaction processing system arranged to perform the method of any preceding claim.

17. A mobile payment transaction system, comprising: a. a mobile device (1) having a mobile application (la) associated with a customer account; b. a merchant terminal (2) arranged to enable a transaction with the customer account; and c. a payment gateway (4); wherein the payment gateway (4) is arranged to communicate a currently applicable account limit of the customer account to the merchant terminal (2) in response to initiation of an offline mode of the mobile application (la); and the merchant terminal (2) is arranged to: receive authorization of a payment transaction against the customer account, while the customer's mobile device (1) is in the offline mode; check the payment transaction against the account limit and accept the payment transaction if it does not exceeds the account limit.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the merchant terminal (2) is arranged to initiate processing of the accepted transaction with an online transaction processing system (6), when online connectivity becomes available.

19. The system of claim 17 or claim 18, wherein the account limit is communicated via a merchant gateway (5) that identifies the merchant terminal (2) to which the account limit is communicated.