Hosted Refund Portal Using Secure Payout Links
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Solution Overview
Problem
Marketplace-based businesses often lack a secure mechanism for returning refunds to customers without requiring sensitive bank account information, limiting payment functionalities and customer comfort.
Innovation Solution
A hosted portal system that facilitates secured payouts via individualized hyperlinks, allowing users to request and validate transactions, tokenize payout information, and initiate transactions automatically, ensuring secure account registration and data protection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional payment technologies are used to enable refunds, then payment functionalities can be provided, but customers must share sensitive bank account information with untrusted parties
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a hosted portal system as an intermediary between the marketplace business and the customer's bank account. The portal generates time-limited hyperlinks that mediate the refund transaction without requiring the customer to share their bank account details with the marketplace business. The hyperlink serves as a secure, temporary authorization token that enables the refund while protecting the customer's sensitive information.
2Reliability
If a hosted portal with individualized hyperlinks is implemented, then information security is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the sensitive bank account information handling from the marketplace business system and relocates it to a separate hosted portal system. The marketplace business only needs to integrate with the portal's hyperlink generation and validation mechanisms, while the portal independently manages the secure collection and processing of bank account details. This separation reduces the complexity burden on the marketplace business.
3Adaptability or versatility
If customers are required to provide bank account details for refunds, then payout functionality is enabled, but customer comfort and trust are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by having customers register their bank account information with the hosted portal in advance, before any refund transactions occur. Once registered, the account information is tokenized and stored securely. For subsequent refunds, customers simply need to click a hyperlink without re-entering their bank account details, making the refund process convenient while maintaining security through the pre-established trusted relationship with the portal.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for providing a hosted portal to facilitate secured payouts is disclosed. The method includes receiving, via the hosted portal, a request from a first user, the request including a refund request from the first user to a second user, user information, and transaction information; generating a hyperlink for the second user based on the transaction information, the hyperlink referencing the hosted portal; validating the request by using the user information; transmitting, via a communication channel, the hyperlink to the second user based on a result of the validating; receiving, via the hosted portal, payout information from the second user; and automatically initiating a transaction based on the transaction information and the payout information.