Decentralized Loyalty Program Architecture with Tokenization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Consumer loyalty programs face security vulnerabilities due to the sensitive information they handle, making them susceptible to data breaches and limiting their expansion to contexts that require secure management and communication of rewards, such as student loan and education assistance.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that securely registers users for loyalty programs, associates loyalty accounts with student loan or education savings accounts, and allocates rewards to these accounts, allowing for secure storage, management, and communication of loyalty/reward information, enabling rewards to be applied towards student loan repayment, education financing, refinancing, or providing interest-free student loans.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If loyalty programs store and manage sensitive consumer information (identifiers, account details), then they can provide personalized rewards and services, but they become vulnerable to security breaches and data theft
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a tokenization system where sensitive consumer information is replaced with non-sensitive tokens. The intermediary tokenization service stores the mapping between tokens and actual data, while the loyalty program only handles tokens. This mediator layer allows personalized rewards through token identification without exposing sensitive information, thus maintaining both personalization capability and security.
2Adaptability or versatility
If loyalty programs expand to new contexts (student loans, education financing), then they can serve more consumers and provide diverse rewards, but they expose additional sensitive financial information increasing security risks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameter of data representation from actual sensitive information to tokenized identifiers. By transforming the form of data storage and transmission, the system can accommodate diverse application contexts (retail, education, loans) without proportionally increasing security risks, as tokens cannot be reverse-engineered to reveal underlying sensitive information.
3Ease of operation
If loyalty programs associate accounts with multiple financial institutions and accounts, then they can provide comprehensive reward management, but they create more attack vectors for potential breaches
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the loyalty program architecture into distinct modular components: tokenization service, reward management module, and financial institution interface. Each component handles specific functions independently, allowing comprehensive reward management across multiple institutions while reducing overall system complexity and attack surface through clear separation of concerns.
Data Source
AI summary
In one implementation, a system with a decentralized architecture to provide secure loyalty program includes a plurality of separate database systems to disperse storage of data for the secure loyalty program across a plurality of separate file systems with different authentication and encryption schemes, a loyalty program computer system to securely allocate loyalty rewards in real-time, a first intermediary computer system to securely manage and provide access to the first intermediary database system, and a second intermediary computer system to securely manage and provide access to the second intermediary database system.