Encrypted Coupon Offline Validation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Businesses face difficulties in managing and enforcing coupons, especially in offline environments without live internet connections, and struggle with validating customer-specific coupons to prevent unauthorized use or duplication.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of encrypted coupons that can be validated offline using a locally available public key, allowing decryption and decoding to extract unique coupon and customer identifiers for validation, eliminating the need for external network access and association data replication.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If businesses distribute lists of specific coupons and associated customers to each business location, then coupon management is enabled in offline environments, but device complexity and data management burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the critical validation information (customer identifier and coupon identifier association) from the central system and embeds it directly into the coupon data structure. This allows the coupon to carry its own validation credentials, eliminating the need for separate distribution of customer-coupon association lists to each business location.
Solution Approach 2:
The validation data is prepared and embedded in the coupon before the coupon is issued to the customer. The encrypted coupon contains pre-configured customer identifiers and coupon identifiers that enable offline validation without requiring real-time or pre-distributed association data.
2Reliability
If businesses maintain lists of coupons and customer associations at central locations, then coupon validation is possible, but network dependency and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The validation functionality is segmented from the central system and embedded within the coupon itself. The coupon contains all necessary validation data (customer identifier, coupon identifier, and their association) in an encrypted format, allowing independent offline validation without network communication.
Solution Approach 2:
The coupon becomes self-sufficient by containing its own validation credentials. The business location system can validate the coupon independently using the embedded data, without requiring services from the central system or network connections.
3Measurement precision
If coupon data includes unique coupon identifiers and unique customer identifiers, then accurate customer-specific validation is achieved, but data security requirements and encryption complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces encryption as an intermediary layer that protects the sensitive customer identifier and coupon identifier association. The data is encrypted using a public key, and the corresponding private key is kept secure at the business location, providing security without exposing the raw sensitive data.
Data Source
AI summary
Technologies are described for generating and validating encrypted coupons. For example, an encrypted coupon can be received. The encrypted coupon can be decrypted using a public key. The decrypted coupon can be decoded (e.g., using a pre-defined data format) to extract coupon data comprising a unique coupon identifier and a unique user identifier. The decrypted coupon can be validated based at least in part upon the unique coupon identifier and the unique user identifier. The process of receiving the encrypted coupon, decrypting the encrypted coupon, decoding the decrypted coupon, and validating the decrypted coupon can be performed offline (e.g., without access to external networks or the internet) and without accessing information indicating associations between unique coupon identifiers and unique user identifiers.