PROCESS AND SYSTEM FOR RECOVERING REMAINING MONEY

The present invention refers to a process and a system for recovering remaining money, that can be used in particular in airports or transit places when going out of countries when one has such remaining money to be recovered.

Systems for delivering banknotes and coins (also known as ATM, acronym for Automatic Teller Machine) are known in the art, through which a user performs various types of economic transactions, the main ones of which are delivering and/or depositing money by the bank credit institution to which such system belongs.

Among the already proposed solutions, see, for example, document DE-U-20 2005 0033 96, that provides for a money self-service system with a screen with indications in various languages for users from various countries, commonly used in airports or in other transit places.

Instead, currently on the market there are no processes, and electro-mechanical apparatuses that

perform them, adapted to recover small amounts of money in a currency that is different from one' s own, with credit on the current account through one's own credit card circuit or for other uses.

Object of the present invention is solving the above mentioned problems, and provides for a process and a system for recovering remaining money that can be easily realised and immediately used and that allow recovering (through donations or credits on one's own account) amounts of money that were unused and so far practically unusable, such as for example small-valued banknotes and/or coins that remain at the end of a business or tourist journey.

Placed in airports, central stations, ports, big hotels and the like, the inventive system can solve the problem of the small amounts in foreign currency that remain, for example at the end of a journey, and that in the majority of cases would remain unused, since they cannot be changed by the bank (coins) or they remain forgotten (banknotes) .

The above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are obtained with a process and a system for recovering remaining money as claimed in the independent claims. Preferred

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embodiments of the present invention are the subject matter of the dependent claims.

The present invention will be better shown in the detailed description that follows, provided as a non-limiting example, with reference to the enclosed drawings, in which:

- Figure 1 is a perspective view of a preferred embodiment of the system for recovering money of the present invention; and

- Figures 2 and 3 are schematic views of the screens obtained through an embodiment of the process of the present invention.

With reference to the Figures, an embodiment of the process and the system for recovering remaining money of the present invention will now be described. It will be immediately obvious that numerous variations and modifications, that will immediately appear evident for the skilled people in the art, can be made to what is described, and that therefore they fall within the scope of the present invention.

With reference to the Figures, the process for recovering money of the present invention substantially comprises the following steps:

requesting (Sl) to provide money in local currency as coins and/or banknotes ("Introduci Valuta Locale Monete o Banconote" in Fig. 2 ) ; upon providing the money, computing the total amount of the provided money; requesting (S7) a choice of a final destination of said money in local currency, said choice being included in a list containing at least the following choices: a) donation as charity; b) credit on one's own credit card and/or current account ("Destinazione Fondi 1 Donation as charity 2 Accredito sulla tua carta" in Fig. 3) ; in case of choice a) donation as charity, requesting (S9) at least one choice of charity association to which the donation has to be sent, and crediting said money to the chosen association ("Donation as charity" in Fig. 3) ; in case of choice b) credit on one' s own credit card and/or current account, requesting (SIl) the entry of data about credit card and/or del current account and

crediting said money to the institution responsible for managing the transactions for such choice ("Accredito sulla tua carta Inserire carta Digita pin" in Fig. 3). It is obviously possible to provide further choices, in addition to those previously designated with a) and b) , for an optimum use of the given money. For example, a possible choice c) other, could comprise transforming the money into purchasing credits, and therefore there would be a step of crediting money in favour of the institution that manages such purchasing credits. Many other solutions are obviously possible for this type of additional choice.

In addition to the above mentioned steps, the inventive process can further comprise the initial step (SO) of displaying choices of possible languages that can be used in the process ("Selezione lingua" in Fig. 2) .

As further variation, the above process can further comprise, after the step of requesting to provide money in a currency, the step of selecting (S3) the final conversion currency and the step of converting (S5) the local currency provided into the final conversion currency.

According to the practical preferred embodiment, the step of requesting the entry of credit card data is composed of the step of requesting the physical insertion of the credit card in a reader, and the step of crediting said money occurs immediately on the credit card inserted in the reader.

Finally, as further preferred variation, the inventive process can further comprise the final step of issuing (S13) a receipt for the performed operation ("Ritirare Ia ricevuta" in Fig. 3).

As further inventive peculiarity, the above described process provides that the step of computing the total amount of the provided money comprises the steps of computing the total amount of the coins that are randomly provided, and computing the total amount of the banknotes that are randomly provided. This obviously simplifies the procedure for entering money by the end user.

The inventive process can be performed in various ways and using various hardware structures. For example, according to the invention, the system 1 for recovering money substantially comprises: means 3, 5 for requesting to provide money in local currency as coins and/or banknotes;

upon providing the money, means 7, 9 for computing the total amount of the provided money; means 3, 5 for requesting a choice of a final destination of said money in local currency, said choice being included in a list containing at least the following choices: a) donation as charity; b) credit on one' s own credit card and/or current account; in case of choice a) donation as charity, means 3, 5 for requesting at least one choice of a charity association to which the donation must be sent, and crediting said money to the chosen association; and in case of choice b) crediting on one's own credit card and/or current account, means 3, 5 for requesting the entry of data about credit card and/or current account and crediting said money to the institution responsible for managing the transactions for such choice.

The above described system 1 can further comprise means 3, 5 for displaying choices of possible languages that can be used in the process,

and means 3, 5 for selecting the final conversion currency and converting the provided local currency into the final conversion currency.

According to a preferred embodiment shown, such means 3, 5 are composed of at least one display 3 and at least one Central Processing Unit CPU 5, that has been shown in a schematic and general way in Fig. 1, since it is well known to the skilled people in the art.

The other main components of the inventive system 1 will be detailed with reference to Fig. 1: it will anyway be obvious to a skilled person in the art that wholly similar systems can be realised, that are able to perform the inventive process .

The above described system will therefore be able to accept, recognise the value and check the validity of the money (metal or paper) of the country in which it will be installed, will have the connection to the bank that owns it in order to have the exchange rate in real time and for transferring, where requested, the amount derived from the deposit through a credit card circuit, such as for example Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, etc.

The inventive system guarantees the maximum reliability and safety of transactions, being based on equipment commonly used for Bancomat points or the like (ATM machines) , and on a retention structure (safe) at UL level.

According to a complete preferred embodiment, as shown in Fig. 1, the inventive system 1 can substantially comprise:

• monitor 3 with touch screen, for selecting the required operations and displaying information, for example with images with figures of the operation to be performed

• keyboard 30 with control and encrypting

• device 9 for accepting and checking banknotes

• device 7 for selecting and checking metal coins

• badge and credit card reader 20

• printers 11 for receipts and daily operations, where required

• power supply unit and UPS (not shown)

• supply drawers 32 (for paper or metal)

• command and control electronic cards and EPROM (not shown)

• safety structure (for example safe) (not shown)

• body, for example made of plastic material

(ABS), 38

• software programs or hardware of the Firewall and Router types (not shown) .

As regards the main benefits obtained by the inventive system and process, the following can be mentioned: reduced equipment cost flexibility, since the system, though adopting some already existing electronic modules, is developed at hardware and software level in order to be able to guarantee: adaptability to connection to all servers of banks and exchange offices, both operating in WINDOWS® and in LINUX environments or with other operating systems; a complete safety of one's own current account when crediting money; and possible complete privacy when donating as charity extremely simple use, using video-guided menus, suitable also for unskilled customers modularity: the software is easily adapted to

the configuration of the system aimed for every single customer: the software bases will always be the same one and will simply be able to be configured according to the related options chosen by the customer (transfer of money to various institutions or credit back on the current account of the payer through Visa circuit, etc.).