System and method of directly providing electronic receipts

Abstract

A method and program product for providing paperless receipts for conducting business transactions. Biometric data and product specific identification information is collected with each purchase and included with an electronic receipt generated for each purchase. The collected product specific information may include product serial numbers for some products, all products or product valued above a minimum threshold cost. The biometric data may include a digital image of each purchaser. The electronic receipt may be passed directly to the customer.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present invention is a continuation in part of published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 430,824 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030021US1), entitled “Point-of-Sale Receipt Electronic Generation” to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 6, 2003 and published Nov. 11, 2004, publication No. 2004 / 0225567 A1; and related to U.S. Pat. No. 6,883,706 B2 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030020US1), entitled “Point-of-Sale Bill Authentication” to Scott D. Mastie et al., issued Apr. 26, 2005; to published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 446,204 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030019US1), entitled “Expense Accounting Data Management Based on Electronic Expense Document” to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 27, 2003 and published Dec. 2, 2004, publication No. 2004 / 0243489 A1; and to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / ______ (Attorney Docket No. BLD920050044US1), entitled “System And Method of Handling Product Returns” to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed c...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010] It is therefore a purpose of the invention to eliminate the need for paper receipts;

[0011] It is another purpose of this invention to reduce the incidence of fraudulent returns in retail sales;

[0012] It is yet another purpose of the invention to eliminate the need for paper receipts, while allowing returns for goods that were purchased without providing paper receipts, while reducing the incidence of fraudulent returns in retail sales.

Problems solved by technology

Frequently, new businesses fail because of cash-flow problems and under capitalization, often because a new business person finds it difficult and time consuming to track business expenses from paper receipts.

Unfortunately, entering receipt information in any of these off-the-shelf packages requires converting paper receipt information to a suitable electronic format.

While this conversion may be a complicated, labor intensive and time consuming for a business, it may be unreasonably burdensome for an individual.

It is hard to keep track of and organize all of those paper receipts.

Moreover, this is very time consuming, and thus difficult to make it a priority.

Further, paper-based processes like this depend upon human collation and so, are vulnerable to tracking, timelines, and audit-readiness problems.

At best keeping organized takes time away from other things; and at worst, either from lost paper receipts and / or failure to organize, can cost someone, e.g., from available tax credits that are lost or from failing to be audit-ready when the need arises.

However, at Christmas time, especially, thieves target cars with bags in sight.

The thief can make the return and the customer is left with the bill and auto damage.

But if the receipt is separated from the merchandise, it may not be easy to match the receipt with the merchandise, especially if the receipt includes inadequate or skimpy purchase documentation, or is partially or completely illegible due to poor printing quality, sun exposure, or other forms of wear and tear.

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