RECORDAL OF TRANSACTOR'S IDENTITY

This invention relates to electronic financial transactions. More particularly it relates to an electronic financial transaction system and method.

Generally according to the invention a representation of an identifier supplied by a financial transactor when effecting a financial transaction is recorded together with details of the transaction. The representation is such that it is provided by an irreversible process, in that the identifier may not be retrieved or recreated therefrom. However, if a person who has been debited as a result of the transaction queries the transaction, he can provide his identifier which is then processed in the same way as the identifier supplied when the transaction was conducted, and if the resulting comparison representation is different from that recorded, the inference is that the person debited was not the transactor, and if they are the same the inference is that the person debited was the transactor. Conveniently, the representation and the details may be recorded electronically or by being printed on a voucher.

The identifier may be a PIN or a biometric scan.

It will be appreciated that the transaction may, in particular, be a point-of- sale (POS) transaction, and the record of the transaction may then be kept by the merchant who has executed the transaction. However, the invention is also relevant to ATM, cashier and other transactions.

Thus, according to a first aspect of the invention there is provided an electronic financial transaction system which includes an identifier representation processing means for processing an identifier in an irreversible manner to provide a representation of the identifier which is not capable of being used to retrieve or recreate the identifier; and

a recording means for recording the representation and details of the transaction.

Further according to the invention there is provided a method of conducting an electronic financial transaction which includes processing an identifier in an irreversible manner to provide a representation of the identifier which is not capable of being used to retrieve or recreate the identifier; and recording the representation and details of the transaction.

The system may include an identifier input means whereby the transactor may enter his identifier and the method may include the step of requiring a transactor to enter his identifier. The identifier input means may thus be a biometric scanner or a keypad.

The recording means may record the representation and the transaction details electronically or on paper such as a voucher. In the latter case the recording means may be a printer.

The identifier may be encrypted in a non-reversible manner to provide the representation.

The invention accordingly extends to a point-of-sale (POS) device which has been modified or programmed to generate an encrypted representation of a transactor's identifier and to supply it to a voucher printer to be printed thereby on a transaction voucher, together with details of the transaction.

The system may further include an auxiliary processing means for processing an identifier in the same way as when a transaction is effected to provide a

comparison representation. The comparison representation and the recorded representation may then be compared.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the recording means and the auxiliary processing means may be at the same location to facilitate comparison of the recorded representation and the comparison representation. They may both be controlled by the same entity, such as a merchant.

The invention will now be described by way of a non-limiting example, with reference to the accompanying diagrammatic drawing, which shows schematically an electronic financial transaction system in accordance with the invention.

In the drawing, reference numeral 10, generally refers to an electronic financial transaction system in accordance with the invention. The system 10 has primary point-of-sale (POS) equipment 12 and auxiliary corroborating equipment 14.

The primary POS equipment 12 includes a POS device 16 which is connected to a fingerprint scanner 18 and a voucher printer 20.

The auxiliary corroborating equipment 14 includes a processor 22 which is connected to a further fingerprint scanner 24 and a printer 26.

In use, a transactor has his fingerprint scanned by the scanner 18 when conducting a financial transaction at a merchant. The POS device 16 generates an encrypted representation of the scanned fingerprint which is then printed on the merchant's copy of a transaction voucher, by the voucher printer 20, together with other details of the transaction, such as the transactor's name. This copy of the voucher is then kept by the merchant. As indicated above, the encrypted representation is generated in an irreversible manner such that it is not

possible to obtain the identifier by decrypting the representation.

If the transaction is subsequently queried, the merchant retrieves his voucher; the person querying the transaction is asked to prove his identity so that the merchant is able to satisfy itself that the person querying the transaction is the account holder in question and is the person named on the voucher; the said person has the same finger scanned by the scanner 24; the scan is processed by the processor 22 in the same way as the POS device encrypts scanned prints; the resulting comparison representation is printed by the printer 26; and the two representations are compared. If they are different the inference is that the transactor was not the person debited and if they are the same the inference is that the transactor was the account holder.

Clearly, the transaction representation could be stored electronically and it could then be displayed or printed for comparison with the comparison representation.