Check writing point of sale system

Abstract

A point of sale system designed to read information from a consumer's check, credit card, or manual input with a subsequent debiting of a consumer's account and crediting merchant's account for the goods or services provided. Point of sale terminals are designed to accept a form of credit card with a consumer's bank account information encoded thereon or in the alternative to read the MICR number from a consumer's check in order to verify that a consumer has an appropriate balance to conduct the transaction with a given merchant. Thereafter the transaction of that information is transmitted to a central computer system which verifies the consumer's credit worthiness and stores the transaction event information for subsequent bank reconciliation via the ACH or other competing network. The invention eliminates the need for paper checks with all bank reconciliation being accomplished electronically. The present invention also includes fraud protection provisions such as velocity controls, social security checks, and scans. The present invention has the further flexibility to differentiate between “first time” consumer usage and those limits otherwise assigned to “known” consumer accounts. Additionally, there is not need for the present system to retain the consumer's check after verification.

Description

RELATED PATENTS[0001]This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09 / 851,609 filed on May 9, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,491, which is a divisional of application Ser. No. 09 / 562,303, filed on May 1, 2000 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,283,366, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08 / 775,400, filed on Dec. 31, 1996, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,528.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to the field of Point-of-Sale systems and more particularly to the integration and processing of purchases whereby a check or encoded card is used as the basic source of identification of the individual and of the individual's bank and whereby the bank account is debited electronically.BACKGROUND ART[0003]Numerous devices exist for processing checks. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,933,536 to Lindemann, et al., describes a check processing device which is used together with a Point-of-Sale terminal. This particular device involves copying and taking a picture of an individual wher...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0026]Thus, the overall objective of the present invention is to provide and support an alternate means for consumer payments for goods and services that operates to replace commercial bank drafts in the point-of-sale environment. Simultaneously, the present invention assures consumers greater access to and use of funds in personal or corporate banking accounts. Further, the system provides system subscribers a significantly improved prospect of collecting the underlying monies for Transaction Events, reduced time for co

Problems solved by technology

The Deming system cannot be used to read account and other information directly from an ordinary bank check and has no use for bank checks as instruments other than negotiable paper.

Further, the Deming system cannot be used to transfer finds at the time of purchase and is not workable at the point of sale; the system can only be used to pay debts that have been incurred in the past and have accumulated.

They do not in any way address the subsequent processing of

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