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Pre-paid commodity system
| Details |
Inventors: Gilmore, Kevin J.; Marrinson, Andrew H.; Jahnke, William A.;
Assignee: CIC Systems, Inc. (Brentwood, TN)
Primary Examiner: Pitts; Harold I.
Assistant Examiner:
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Hill, Van Santen, Steadman & Simpson
The invention concerns a card activated prepayment and metering systgem for the sale of a utility service. Distributors are sold bulk sevice credits which they then resell in smaller quantities to individual customers. Customers are issued magnetic striped cards upon which information may be stored and from which information may be retrieved. Distributors issue credits on the cards which are later read by a customer's home terminal. Periodically, credit information is dumped from the distributor's terminal to a central computer. Similarly, audit information is periodically read and dumped from a customer's terminal to the central computer. The computer controls each customer's terminal through information broadcast over an FM transmitter, which is received by a receiver in each customer's terminal. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention combines all of the necessary ingredients for a complete pre-paid commodity or utility service system.
Each transaction in the system is identified with a unique identification number.
The system contains a number of sub-systems, each of which maintains processing information, to provide an audit trail.
The information maintained by the sub-systems is fed to a central computer which performs a complete automated accounting of all transactions as they occurred throughout the entire system.
The present invention comprises four sub-systems: a host computer; a distributor terminal; a customer terminal; and a meter reading terminal.
Together they form a closed loop system.
In the use of the system, a bulk amount of credit is issued or sold to a distributor.
The distributor then sells smaller portions of credit to individual customers.
Each customer then activates his or her unique commodity or utility service metering device in accordance with the issued credit.
At routine intervals, a commodity or service provider may take individualized non-attrusive meter readings which are fed to a central computer to provide closed loop verification.
In the system, a host computer issues bulk credit to a distributor terminal by sending information over a modem link or on a magnetic storage medium.
The information transferred consists of a unique distributor terminal identification number, a control number prefix and the value of the bulk credit.
A customer, upon purchasing credit, pays the purchase price and hands a distributor such customer's magnetic card.
The magnetic card is similar to the various types of plastic cards which contain a magnetic strip upon which information may be stored.
The information on the customer's card comprises, at a minimum, the customer's service number.
Upon receiving the customer's pre-payment, the distributor stores certain information on the customer's card.
This stored information comprises the distributor's terminal identification number, a transaction control number, the value of the customer's transaction, and the expiration date of the credit
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