Centralized Incentive Management via Payment Intermediary
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Online merchants face challenges in effectively informing and managing incentives for online transactions, as customers struggle to recall or organize offers, leading to lost sales and missed savings opportunities.
Innovation Solution
A system that maintains user accounts with financial information, receives and stores incentive information from online marketplaces, and associates it with user accounts, allowing users to access and manage incentives through a network, including client devices and payment service providers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If merchants engage in expensive advertising directed to various media to attract consumers, then consumer awareness of incentives is improved, but advertising costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a payment service provider as an intermediary that maintains a database of incentive information and automatically provides relevant incentives to consumers during online transactions. This mediator eliminates the need for merchants to conduct expensive advertising campaigns, as the incentive information is delivered directly to consumers through the payment processing system.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables consumers to automatically receive and manage their own incentive information through the payment service provider platform. Consumers can view, recall, and utilize their incentives without requiring merchant advertising or manual tracking, making the incentive delivery system self-sufficient and eliminating advertising costs.
2Loss of information
If consumers manually print or electronically store merchant incentive offers for future reference, then incentive recall capability is improved, but consumer management burden increases
Solution Approach 1:
The payment service provider automatically stores incentive information in a centralized database and provides consumers with automated access to their incentives through the platform. Consumers no longer need to manually print or electronically store incentive offers, as the system handles storage, retrieval, and management automatically, significantly reducing the consumer burden.
Solution Approach 2:
The payment service provider acts as an intermediary that manages incentive information on behalf of both merchants and consumers. It receives incentive data from merchants, stores it securely in a database, and automatically retrieves relevant incentives for consumers during transactions, eliminating the need for consumers to perform manual management tasks.
3Ease of operation
If consumers do not manually manage incentive offers, then consumer convenience is improved, but incentive recall ability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The payment service provider serves as an intermediary that automatically manages incentive information for consumers. It stores incentive data in a centralized database and automatically retrieves relevant incentives based on consumer transactions and profiles, ensuring incentive recall ability is maintained without requiring any manual consumer action.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the payment service provider continuously monitors consumer transactions and automatically provides relevant incentive information. The system learns from consumer behavior patterns and transaction history to proactively present appropriate incentives, ensuring consumers receive relevant offers without manual management while maintaining high recall ability.
4Loss of information
If merchants provide incentives through traditional advertising channels, then incentive delivery reach is improved, but information organization and tracking difficulty increases
Solution Approach 1:
The payment service provider acts as a centralized intermediary that receives, stores, and manages incentive information from multiple merchants in a unified database. This centralized approach eliminates the complexity of organizing and tracking incentives across multiple advertising channels, as all incentive data is consolidated and automatically managed through the payment processing system.
Data Source
AI summary
Various methods and systems are provided to facilitate the centralized storage and access of online incentives such as coupons redeemable at associated online marketplaces. In one example, merchants may provide incentive information to payment service providers that in turn may associate such information with user accounts maintained by the payment service providers. Payment service providers may permit users to view incentives associated with their user accounts, thereby providing users with a comprehensive way to manage incentives from a plurality of online merchants. In another example, merchants may advise users of previously registered incentives in response to user activities in relation to online marketplaces.