Login| Sign Up| Help| Contact|

Patent Searching and Data


Title:
ATM (AUTOMATED TELLER MACHINE) MANAGEMENT SYSTEM-FOR INSTANT RESOLUTION OF CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS
Document Type and Number:
WIPO Patent Application WO/2014/141305
Kind Code:
A2
Abstract:
The present invention relates to an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) Management System (AMS) for instant resolution of customer complaints with respect to cash transactions and a mechanism to provide instant access to ATM Electronic Journal (EJ), transaction images and more importantly root cause of failure. More particularly, the present invention relates to a transaction management part on the ATM comprising of an automatic transaction correlator part which is capable of doing multi-facet cash transaction failure analysis to arrive at the root cause of failure and give remedial hints towards resolving cash transaction disputes and transaction cash reconciliation, thereby reducing time to redress; a transaction failure notifier part in tandem with the transaction correlator part which segregates failure-only events, creates an intelligent fault-based failure-analysis record, notifies the same to central ATM Management System (AMS), thereby achieving a network bandwidth efficient transfer of failure-analysis records.

Inventors:
RAMANATHAN NARAYANAKUMAR (IN)
GOPALSWAMY BRAMANANDHAREDDY (IN)
Application Number:
PCT/IN2014/000164
Publication Date:
September 18, 2014
Filing Date:
March 13, 2014
Export Citation:
Click for automatic bibliography generation   Help
Assignee:
RAMANATHAN NARAYANAKUMAR (IN)
Attorney, Agent or Firm:
RAVINDRAN, Sudhir et al. (Creative Enclave III Floor,148-150, Luz Church Road, Mylapore, Chennai 4, IN)
Download PDF:
Claims:
I CLAI^YP 2014 141305 PCT/IN2014/000164

1. A transaction management part on Automated Teller Machine (ATM) to deal with cash transaction disputes and thereof instant resolution of customer complaints comprising of an automatic transaction correlator part on the ATM which is capable of doing multi-facet cash transaction failure analysis to arrive at root cause of failure and give remedial hints towards resolving cash transaction disputes and transaction cash reconciliation, thereby reducing time to redress.

2. A transaction management part as claimed in claim 1, comprising a transaction failure notifier part on the ATM in tandem with the transaction correlator part which segregates failure-only events, creates an intelligent fault-based failure-analysis record, notifies the same to central ATM Management System (AMS), thereby achieving a network bandwidth efficient transfer of failure-analysis records.

3. A transaction management part on central ATM Management System (AMS) which

Is capable of presenting the failure-analysis records with the correlated resolution hints being displayed in tandem, thereby reducing the time to redress customer complaints;

Has a correlator part that further analyses the failure-analysis records around the time of dispute and provides useful hints to AMS operator to resolve transaction disputes; Has a feedback system integrated with the ATM which closes the loop of failure- analysis record and remedy, thereby helping the AMS operator make better judgements;

Has a pattern matcher part that is capable of identifying transaction failure patterns and proactively suggest remedial actions or probable remedial actions; and

Requests for an on-demand correlation request on a disputed transaction to the ATM which in turn triggers the ATM transaction correlator part to provide additional hints, thereby reducing time to redress customer complaints.

Description:
ATM (AUTOMATED TELLER MACHINE) MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - FOR

INSTANT RESOLUTION OF CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

FIELD OF INVENTION

The present invention relates to the field of Banking and Automated teller machines (ATMs)., More particularly, the present invention relates to an ATM Management System (AMS) for instant resolution of customer complaints with respect to cash transactions and a mechanism to provide instant access to ATM Electronic Journal (EJ), transaction images and more importantly the root cause of failure. The system and method of the present invention provides immediate resolution of complaints, conflict or discrepancy with respect to ATM cash transactions. Advantageously, the present invention reduces the time required to service ATM transaction complaints.

DESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART

In the deployment of ATM networks, it is important to handle faulty transactions involving cash. The failures are predominantly due to internal failures within ATM. The system is generally built with resiliency to automatically reverse such faulty transactions and thereby ensure the customer is not affected by the failures. However, there can be many instances in which the transactions are not reversed automatically. Failures in automatic reversal of faulty transactions, is usually managed offline during periodic cash reconciliation of ATM and host transactions. At the same time, customer would also report such failed transaction to the Bank branch of Bank's customer care. The bank's executive would typically register a complaint with details of Customer Name, Account Number/Card number, transaction amount, location of the ATM, name of the bank, transaction id, transaction date and time, etc. These details help the bank do post processing of the registered complaint. However, the post processing takes a lot of time and typically runs easily into a week for the reason that not every detail about the failure transaction would be available instantly. Such long period required for redress will not be acceptable to the customer.

Typically, ATMs are connected to a financial switch, which in turn routes the transaction to core banking systems. The financial switch generates a crisp formatted "feed" data that has details about transaction performed on ATMs connected to it. In addition, a little detailed ouma r o ogge y e inanc a sw c . e ee a a " -- record" play an important role in complaint redress. Backend systems are built to process the feed data and journal records and the front-end web interface systems are made accessible to bank. Customer-care would access these front-end web interfaces to look for details of a transaction. Such switch generated data is typically accessible instantly. However, neither the "feed" data nor the "journal record" would have sufficient information to analyse the problem faced by customer. One needs to know what really happened on the ATM in order to come to a conclusion particularly in the cases of suspected failure transactions.

Following are a few faulty transaction experiences which banking customers face at ATMs: a) Receiving no cash or cash short by a few notes while performing a cash withdrawal transaction at a cash dispensing ATM, however, on the other side, the customer account would get debited for the transaction amount without physical cash being dispensed in full;

b) Receiving credit for less cash while performing a cash deposit transaction at a cash deposit ATM. The cash deposit ATM could have processed 3 currency notes, but end up giving credit for only 2 currency notes because of an internal system error;

There could be other cases like:

a) Customer complains of suspicious transactions on his account. It could be as complex as fraudsters using duplicate cards made out of skimming attacks or it could be as simple as customer's family member withdrawing cash without customer's knowledge; b) In the rarest occasions, there are even cases where a customer is incorrectly dispensed more currency that what was requested in the cash withdrawal operation. A few honest customers may bring this to the attention of the bank and few dishonest customers may take advantage of the situation and may argue that they did not receive any excess cash;

Before getting into the root cause that attributes towards the inordinate amount of time taken to resolve customer complaints, a little detail into the various systems and steps involved and those that comprise the backend post processing of the registered complaint would help understand the bottlenecks. n M exec uc i ansac ons suc as cas w rawa or cas epos w ¾ nc operation of the customer and while performing the requested operation, ATM records every bit of information pertaining to successful completion or failure conditions encountered during the transaction. All ATMs are required to generate a log of transactions performed on it. The log is typically called "Electronic Journal (EJ)". Each transaction is captured by the ATM as a journal record in the EJ. This journal record contains status information on success/failure of the transaction. However, the journal record does not capture the root cause of failure.

On the other hand, the transaction images also play a vital role in complaint redress. Today ATMs are in-built with multiple cameras as shown in Figure 1, one facing the customer and another facing the cash slot. The camera facing the customer are designed to take multiple snaps of the customer doing the transaction and the cash slot camera takes multiple snaps capturing cash being presented to the customer, customer picking the cash from the slot and cash retract if any happening during the transaction. The cash slot camera images give clear information on whether the cash was indeed presented to the customer, if the customer did pick the cash or not, did the customer mishandle the cash slot or if any fraudulent activity on the cash slot. In addition to the cameras fitted on the ATM fascia, there is ATM integrated room surveillance done using Digital Video Surveillance Systems (DVSS) for security purposes. The ATM camera snaps and DVSS videos taken during the transaction are very vital to resolve customer complaints.

It has to be noted that the most critical information that is required to diagnose a customer complaint is in fact available at the ATM during the transaction, but the same is not available in a cohesive correlated manner. Quick and easy accessibility of this critical information plays a crucial role and decides the time-to-redress customer complaints. Hence there is a need to plug every gap in the current system design which hinders instant accessibility to such critical information.

Banks typically have a centralized ATM Management System (AMS) as shown in Figure 2 that does the job of pulling the EJ from each ATM across the network and accumulating the EJs at a central archive as cited in JP2004164209. JP2004164209 constitutes of a cash automatic transaction device ATM and a host computer. The ATM executes transaction such as money reception/payment from an account according to the operation of a customer, and records transaction contents such as an accounting number and money reception/payment , . . , . , Δ .

sum or the like as electronic journal in a journal recording part. This electronic journal is transmitted to a host computer, and managed in a journal data base in the host computer. In addition to this, the AMS also does the job of pulling and accumulating the transaction images and surveillance videos from each ATM and archiving the same. JP2010072989 discloses an integrated management system of electronic journal and video that makes the electronic journal data and image monitoring data of Consumer Transaction Facility which are installed in the store of a financial institution, etc. cooperate, and relates to the electronic journal for aiming at unjust dealings and prevention of a crime, and the integrated management system of an image. However, the AMS referred in these cited patents merely acts as a repository of transaction EJ and transaction images which help in the post processing of customer complaints and does not have the intelligence to automatically interpret failure root cause of cash transaction disputes.

OBJECTS OF INVENTION

One or more of the problems of the conventional prior art may be overcome by various embodiments of the present invention.

The primary object of the present invention is to provide a transaction correlator part on the ATM which is capable of doing multi-facet cash transaction failure analysis to arrive at root cause and provide remedial hints towards resolving cash transaction disputes and transaction cash reconciliation, thereby reducing time to redress.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a notifier part on the ATM in tandem with the transaction correlator part that segregates failure-only events, creates an intelligent failure-analysis record, notifies the same to central ATM Management System (AMS), thereby achieving a network bandwidth efficient transfer of failure-analysis records. ,

Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a transaction management part on the central ATM Management System (AMS) which

Is capable of presenting the failure-analysis records with the correlated resolution hints being displayed in tandem, thereby reducing the time to redress customer complaints;

Has a correlator part that further analyses the failure-analysis records around the time of dispute and provides useful hints to AMS operator to resolve transaction disputes; Has a pattern matcher part that is capable of identifying transaction failure patterns and proactively suggest remedial actions or probable remedial actions; and

Requests for an on-demand correlation request on a disputed transaction to the ATM which in turn triggers the ATM transaction correlator part to provide additional hints, thereby reducing time to redress customer complaints.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

Thus according to the basic aspect of the present invention, there is provided a transaction management part on Automated Teller Machine (ATM) to deal with cash transaction disputes and thereof instant resolution of customer complaints comprising of an automatic transaction correlator part on the ATM which is capable of doing multi-facet cash transaction failure analysis to arrive at root cause of failure and give remedial hints towards resolving cash transaction disputes and transaction cash reconciliation, thereby reducing time to redress.

It is another aspect of the present invention comprising a transaction failure notifier part on the ATM in tandem with the transaction correlator part which segregates failure-only events, creates an intelligent fault-based failure-analysis record, notifies the same to central ATM Management System (AMS), thereby achieving a network bandwidth efficient transfer of failure-analysis records.

Another aspect of the present invention is directed to provide a transaction management part on central ATM Management System (AMS) which

Is capable of presenting the failure-analysis records with the correlated resolution hints being displayed in tandem, thereby reducing the time to redress customer complaints;

Has a correlator part that further analyses the failure-analysis records around the time of dispute and provides useful hints to AMS operator to resolve transaction disputes; Has a feedback system integrated with the ATM which closes the loop of failure- analysis record and remedy, thereby helping the AMS operator make better judgements;

S i , + . . . . , ... . . ..

Has a panern matcher part that is capable of identifying transaction lauure patterns and proactively suggest remedial actions or probable remedial actions; and

Requests for an on-demand correlation request on a disputed transaction to the ATM which in turn triggers the ATM transaction correlator part to provide additional hints, thereby reducing time to redress customer complaints.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS

Figure 1: illustrates block diagram of an existing ATM.

Figure 2: illustrates existing ATM network and the ATM Management System (AMS).

Figure 3: is a flowchart illustrating transaction data correlator part on the ATM according to the present invention.

Figure 4: is a flowchart further illustrating transaction data correlator part according to the present invention.

Figure 5: is a flowchart illustrating AMS correlator according to the present invention.

Figure 6: is a flowchart illustrating AMS feedback system according to the present invention. Figure 7: is a flowchart further illustrating AMS correlator according to the present invention. Figure 8: is a flowchart further illustrating AMS correlator according to the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION WITH REFERENCE TO THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS

As stated above, the present invention provides an ATM management system for instant resolution of customer complaints by proposing a multi-facet failure analysis mechanism which helps in resolving cash transaction disputes.

Although every bank has a centralized ATM Management System (AMS) in place, there are certain drawbacks in the system design that make it very ineffective and inappropriate for the purpose.

The prime drawback is that although transaction failure is indicated in the journal record, it neither does have detailed information on root cause of failure nor does it have exact details on what happened with the cash handler device on the ATM at the time of failure. The EJ is typically plain text kind of information that is meant for human readability and hence cannot record detailed system failure data. However, without such detailed system failure data records it is quite impossible to do a quick redress of customer complaints. Today, either it requires to physically reconcile the cash at ATM or requires the ATM maintenance team to , , ,. ., ·, , , .. .

look through the system failure data records to correlate the possible customer complaint. Such manual verification leads to delays in dispute resolution. The present invention overcomes the drawback by providing a correlator part on the ATM that would monitor a transaction, grab the system failure data and do the required analysis and create a failure- analysis record pointing to the root-cause of transaction failure. The same failure-analysis record is packed with cohesive data that would either pin-point to the root-cause or give indications of root-cause of failure. The ATM transmits the output of the correlator part to the central AMS which in turn could provide more improvised analysis of the failure conditions.

Another drawback is that the large scale centralized pulling and consolidating the complete set of transaction images and surveillance videos from each ATM for every transaction, proves to be impractical in real world, ATM networks that are provisioned with very less network bandwidth. The effective data transfer rates are as low as 1 to 3 kbps on both leased lines and wireless networks. The images and video data, although compressed, occupy much larger bandwidth when compared to the EJ data and hence choke the ATM network, rendering the essential EJ transfer to AMS itself failing on multiple ATMs. The lack of above transaction data further leads to delays in dispute resolution. The AMS of the present invention provides for reliable bandwidth efficient transmission of journal records, system failure data records, images and videos. The ATM transmits transaction data only for the transactions that resulted in a failure or suspected failure.

Although the AMS systems available today serve as a central archive of every transaction on every ATM, it just provides access to the journal record; this data provides very little information and does not point to the root-cause of failure of a transaction nor is it fully capable of suggesting remedial action. Hence dispute resolution typically ends up requiring physical cash reconciliation (cash tally) on the ATM. If for some reason, on a particular day, there happens to be a series of similar transaction failures on an ATM, it becomes all the more difficult to tally physical cash against the numerous transaction accounts.

An integrated transaction management part on the ATM according to the present invention comprises of:

A transaction failure detector part that either detects or suspects a failure and creates a system failure data record; co ator part t at co ates n ormat on crea es an s w iu s uu i data record consisting of various elements that would help in trouble-shooting a transaction failure;

The various elements include:

a. Journal record.

b. System failure data record.

c. Cash counter information before and after the transaction.

d. Images captured by the customer facing internal camera and the cash slot camera.

e. Videos captured by the Digital Video Surveilljance cameras.

A transaction data correlator part as shown in Figure 3, that understands and interprets the system failure data record and creates a cohesive unit of information called the failure-analysis record which includes a hint on remedial action; and

A transaction failure notifier part that transmits the failure-analysis records constructed by the correlator part to the central AMS.

Today, on most ATMs, the detector part and the collator part already exist in some form or the other. The correlator part on the ATM is the real invention which will extract information from the detector and collator and arrives at the root cause of failure and its possible remedy. The correlator part decides whether or not to package the (c) cash counter information before and after the transaction, (d) images captured by the customer facing internal camera and the cash slot camera and (e) videos captured by the Digital Video Surveillance cameras in the failure-analysis record that will be sent across as a failure notification by the notifier part to the central AMS over the network. In most of the straight forward cases of transaction failure, the correlator part would package only (a) Journal record and (b) system failure data record in the failure-analysis record. In few other cases, particularly suspected failures, the correlator part may additionally package (c) cash counter information before and after the transaction, (d) images captured by the customer facing internal camera and the cash slot camera and (e) videos captured by the Digital Video Surveillance cameras, and not all 3 information, but selectively, depending upon the nature of the issue. For example, as shown in Figure 4, there could be a case wherein the ATM was able to collect the cash perfectly from the cassettes, but was unable to present the same to customer because the cash slot shutter had a problem in opening up, but this condition of shutter not opening was not sensed by the electromechanical sub systems on the ATM, however, the cash slot camera would detect no motion capture on the shuueranu lcii c g ve a c ue t at t ere s poss ty o cas s ot s at i a ui which case, it makes sense to pack the cash slot camera images as a part of the failure- analysis record and the Digital video surveillance videos do not make sense to be packed in the failure-analysis record. This type of dynamic construction of failure-analysis record ensures the data transmission unit to the AMS is kept very crisp and concise. The methodology also ensures effective usage of the available network bandwidth as shown in Figure 4 and also makes the AMS operator comfortable in understanding the failure reason.

The correlator part further decides as to whether information related to any previous actions on the ATM that could have triggered the current transaction failure can be packaged in the failure-analysis record. For example, a cash loading operation might have happened right before the series of failures, which could point to cash not being loaded as per product instructions. Another example is that ATM may not have sensed a failure in a cash transaction and treated it as successful; however, it may realise in the subsequent cash transaction that there is a jam condition induced by the previous transaction which prevents itself from picking the cash. The correlator, in this case, can raise a suspect event on the previous transaction.

The correlator part in addition to identifying the root-cause or pointing towards the suspected root-cause, would also suggest the remedial action to be taken. For instance, when the ATM has a problem in opening up the cash slot shutter, it means that customer did not have access to cash at all. In that case, the remedial action would be to credit back to customer. However, not all failures can be suggested with remedial action. There could still be some unknown failures on the ATM for which although the cause is known, a remedial action cannot be suggested and in that case, the failure-analysis record would signify that a manual cash tally is required.

Whenever the ATM goes through a successful transaction, a transaction event consisting of the journal record alone is constructed and transmitted to the AMS. The images and videos of such successful transactions are not required to be transmitted to the AMS.

In fact, banks realize the criticality of protecting and retaining the EJ, system failure data, images and surveillance video content on the ATM and hence are deploying a secondary hard disk on the ATM which will serve as a backup medium for storage of this critical content. Even if one hard disk fails on the ATM, the other will have complete set of EJ, system failure a a, os rom w c e opera ons can e res ore , decided that only the journal record will be archived on the AMS, there could still be a situation where in although a transaction was serviced successfully by the ATM, a customer could raise a dispute over such transaction. In those cases, the AMS can issue an on-demand transaction data retrieval command to the ATM. The ATM in turn would construct a transaction data record consisting of the system transaction data, images and videos corresponding to the transaction and transmit back to the AMS. The aforementioned collator part shall be responsible to respond to such transaction data pull requests from the central AMS. The transaction management part on the central ATM Management System (AMS) according to the present invention comprises of:

A transaction failure notification handler part that decodes the failure-analysis records transmitted by the ATM and indexes and creates a repository of failed transactions; and

A user friendly display part.

The user friendly display part

a. Can list all failed transactions on a selected ATM on a selected day of transaction; allows user to search and locate a failed transaction and display the failure-analysis record details in a comprehendible manner. The suggested remedial action if any would also be displayed. b. Contains an AMS correlator part that provides hints to resolve disputed transactions that do not have a failure-analysis record. There could be genuine customers disputing transactions which the ATM did not sense any failure and treated it as completely successful although there could have been a legitimate error condition which the

ATM detector part failed to sense. In those cases, the AMS can help the operator with providing him with information on the history of failures on the ATM and also give information on other transactions which happened around the time of the disputed transaction. In addition, the AMS can help the operator with information on previous and subsequent transaction failures instances which can be correlated to the disputed transaction as illustrated in Figure 5. c. Contains an AMS feedback system part which helps the AMS correlator part display additional hints on reconciliation mismatches. In the case of failure-analysis record i i e exac cause o a ure or no sugges ng e tem , operator may decide to initiate a physical cash tally. In such case, the AMS shall send request to the ATM to create an admin cash tally event against the disputed transaction. When the ATM maintenance personnel visit the ATM, he would do the cash tally and provide his inputs on the ATM against the admin cash tally event. This event update shall be transmitted back to the AMS which would record the same in its database. Such feedback system can be used by the AMS correlator to automatically flag transaction and reconciliation mismatches. The feedback system helps the AMS operator to know what kind of recent failures have happened on the particular ATM and take relevant steps on further failure reports. The feedback system is illustrated in Figure 6. d. Contains an AMS pattern matcher part that does pattern matching of failure-analysis records and proactively suggests the AMS operator to initiate remedial actions on similar fail-pattern transactions. The AMS operator can locate transaction failures similar to the one under dispute around the time of occurrence by doing a pattern matching of failure-analysis records. This helps operator to trigger proactive action and remediation against all such similar transaction failures that had happened with numerous other customers if any. The AMS would look up its failure-analysis record database to match the pattern of system failure data records and produce the list of similar affected transactions as illustrated in Figure 7. e. AMS can request for an on-demand correlation request to the ATM correlator part for additional analysis and hint on any disputed transaction. The on-demand correlation on the ATM shall provide additional hints to the AMS on related operations that had happened on the ATM around the time of disputed transaction which could have potentially affected the transaction under dispute. For instance, an ATM admin operator manual intervention prior to the time of disputed transaction could point to possible mishandling of ATM sub system and the same is illustrated in Figure 8.