BACKGROUND

This invention relates generally to systems and methods for payment management for supporting mobile payments. Such systems and methods enable rapid integration of payments performed using a mobile device, such as a smart phone, into Point-of-Sales (POS) systems with minimal upgrading. Further, such systems and methods allow for enhanced security because it eliminates the need for sensitive information to be stored on the POS. Lastly, the payment management described herein enables the performance of enhanced analytics to provide users with value added services.

Payments can traditionally be performed using cash, magnetic credit card or debit cards, or using a check. Other payment mechanism, such as smart credit cards, have never experienced the success in the marketplace that these more traditional forms of payment have enjoyed. However, more recently, with the more widespread adoption of smart phones and other mobile devices, the concept of banking using an application loaded upon a mobile device is becoming more common. In addition to traditional banking services, applications are being developed that enable a user to pay for transactions at a POS using their mobile device. These may be referred to as “mobile payment applications”.

Generally, these mobile payment applications are developed by banking institutions that want to allow their account holders to pay from their accounts, much as a debit card does. These banks generally are required to partner with individual merchants, or POS developers, in order to have the application function. This has been the largest hurdle to the deployment of mobile payment applications.

Moreover, the use of a smart phone for payments generates a large amount of user specific data that is currently being under utilized by the banking institutions and merchants alike.

It is therefore apparent that an urgent need exists for systems and methods for payment management which supports mobile payments. Such systems will have the added benefit of eliminating the need for merchants to store sensitive account data, and further provides additional analytics for predictive value added services.

SUMMARY

To achieve the foregoing and in accordance with the present invention, systems and methods for managing mobile payments is provided. In these systems and methods, a bank (or other account issuer) provides an application that is loaded onto a mobile device. The application can be used at checkout by a consumer in order to pay for items. Payment management systems disclosed herein enables the usage of such mobile payment applications across a wide range of merchants in a transparent and seamless manner.

In some embodiments, the mobile payment application generates a unique code or token in response to the user wishing to pay for items. The code is scanned or otherwise read by the point of sale, which then provides the code to the payment management system. The payment management system then contracts the account issuer and authenticates that the code is indeed valid. In response, the account issuer provides the payment management system a primary account number associated with the user attempting to make the purchase.

The payment management system may also receive transaction totals and merchant Ids from the point of sales terminal. This information, along with the account identification number, may be employed to attempt to authorize the transaction via standard payment systems (such as Visa, for example). The payment system accepts or declines the transaction in a response.

If the transaction is accepted the system may further tokenize the received primary account number for added security. This tokenization includes validating the merchant ID against merchant logs to ensure that the merchant is configured for tokenization. The token is then generated as a hash of the primary account number, expiration, and a group ID. The encrypted token is provided to the merchant for storage. The group ID allows particular merchants to redeem the token at a later time.

In addition to enabling mobile payments, some embodiments of the systems and methods enable the generation of value added services by farming transaction logs to determine consumer types and consumer patterns. Additionally, consumer location and device information can be collected. This can all be used to generate predictive measures of consumer behaviors and purchasing patterns. These predictions may them be employed to generate offers for the consumer.

Note that the various features of the present invention described above may be practiced alone or in combination. These and other features of the present invention will be described in more detail below in the detailed description of the invention and in conjunction with the following figures.

