Patent Issued for Systems and method for providing card account controls and purchase impact information (USPTO 11443324): United Services Automobile Association

2022 SEP 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States) has been issued patent number 11443324, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Billman, Bradly Jay (San Antonio, TX, US), Hartman, Wayne Maurice (San Antonio, TX, US).

This patent was filed on June 12, 2018 and was published online on September 13, 2022.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “Currently, buyers both young and old often make purchases without considering the impact of doing so. The ubiquitous use and acceptance of credit cards and debit cards and overdraft protection loans make large sums of money easily available to make purchases quickly on impulse. This applies to debit card, credit card and checkbook use, all leading back to an account. Each scenario, whether it is a credit card purchase, debit card purchase or use of a checkbook has a different impact on the buyer and their financial condition, but the buyer often is not aware of or does not think about the different impacts. Even if a buyer does want to give it serious thought before making a large purchase, a buyer must often make many calculations on the spot or go through their finances at home first if they want to determine if they can really afford to make the purchase, thus perhaps losing an opportunity for a good bargain.

“In this regard, there is a need for systems and methods that overcome the shortcomings described above and others.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

“In consideration of the above-identified shortcomings of the art, systems and methods for providing card account controls and purchase impact information are described herein. For several embodiments, a system for providing card account controls and purchase impact information may comprise at least one subsystem that receives information regarding a potential purchase of a customer, and at least one subsystem that provides potential purchase impact information to the customer based on the information regarding the potential purchase of the customer.

“Other features and embodiments are described below.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A non-transitory, computer readable medium storing instructions executable by a processor of a server of a card/checking service to provide card account controls and purchase impact information, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for: locking a card account associated with a customer to block one or more future purchases of the customer using the card account; receiving, from a merchant device or a customer device, information regarding a potential purchase from a merchant using the card account associated with the customer after the card account has been locked; generating potential purchase impact information based at least in part on the information regarding the potential purchase; providing, via the merchant device or the customer device, the potential purchase impact information to the customer; identifying one or more other customer devices of one or more other customers associated with the card account; providing an alert to the one or more other customer devices of the one or more other customers associated with the card account, wherein the alert comprises the purchase impact information; receiving, from the merchant device or the customer device, a confirmation from the customer indicating that the customer desires to make the potential purchase after the potential purchase impact information has been provided to the customer; receiving, from the one or more other customer devices, respective confirmations from the one or more other customers indicating that the one or more other customers permit unlocking of the card account for the potential purchase; and unlocking the card account associated with the customer for use in performing the potential purchase in response to receiving the confirmation from the merchant device or the customer device and the respective confirmations from the one or more other customer devices.

“2. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for: accessing one or more other accounts associated with the customer to obtain current information on the other accounts; calculating a potential financial impact on the one or more other accounts based on the information accessed regarding the one or more other accounts and the information received regarding the potential purchase; and providing, to the merchant device or the customer device, the calculated potential financial impact on the one or more other accounts as part of the potential purchase impact information.

“3. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the potential purchase impact information is selected from the group consisting of one or more of the following: financial impact to the customer if the potential purchase is made, financial status of the customer if the potential purchase is made, financial status over time of the customer if the potential purchase is made, financial impact comparison figures showing financial status of the customer with and without making the potential purchase, financial impact comparison figures showing financial status over time of the customer with and without making the potential purchase, impact to the customer’s budget if the potential purchase is made, amount left for spending for the customer after the potential purchase in a budget category of the customer in which a potential purchase falls, net worth of the customer if the potential purchase is made, financial impact to a funding source of the potential purchase, an account balance after the potential purchase, amount of interest that would be charged on the potential purchase given minimum payments would be made to a credit card on which the potential purchase is placed, amount of interest that would be charged on the potential purchase to a credit card on which the potential purchase is placed given an amount of time that will be used to pay for the potential purchase given by the customer, amount of interest that would be charged on the potential purchase given information received by the customer regarding the potential purchase, financial impact to one or more retirement goals of the customer if the potential purchase is made, loss of value over time of a product to be potentially purchased, amount of time the customer would have to work to earn an amount equal to the potential purchase amount, information regarding a product to be potentially purchased, recall information regarding a product to be potentially purchased, information regarding safety of a product to be potentially purchased, information regarding health of a product to be potentially purchased, and consumer review information regarding a product to be potentially purchased.

“4. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 2, wherein the one or more other accounts associated with the customer comprise: a checking account, a savings account, a retirement account, an investment account, an insurance account, a trading account, or any combination thereof.

“5. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the customer device is a mobile computing device of the customer.

“6. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the customer device is a desktop or laptop computing device of the customer.

“7. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the information regarding the potential purchase is received from an application executing on the customer device, wherein the potential purchase impact information is provided to the application executing on the customer device, and wherein the potential purchase impact information is configured to be presented on a display of the customer device.

“8. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 7, wherein the application is configured to receive at least a portion of the information regarding the potential purchase from a bar code scanner or radio frequency identification (RFID) reader associated with the customer device.

“9. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein locking the card account of the customer comprises locking the card account for all potential purchases.

“10. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for unlocking the card account comprise instructions for: unlocking the card account only to allow the potential purchase to be processed by the merchant device of the merchant.

“11. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for unlocking the card account comprise instructions for: unlocking the card account for all potential purchases for a predetermined period of time.

“12. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise instructions for: after unlocking the card account, providing, via the merchant device or the customer device, a notification to the customer that the card account has been unlocked.

“13. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the potential purchase impact information comprises a request for the customer to provide the confirmation that the customer desires to make the potential purchase.

“14. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the information regarding the potential purchase comprises of one or more of the following: a potential purchase amount, a category of the potential purchase, a type of the potential purchase, a serial number of an item to be purchased, a Uniform Product Code (UPC) of an item to be purchased, information identifying an exact item or services to be purchased, information identifying a merchant, a location of a merchant, a merchant code, a merchant name, a category of merchant, a merchant type, a date and/or time the potential purchase is to be made.

“15. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein locking the card account of the customer comprises locking the card account to block potential purchases over a predetermined amount.

“16. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein locking the card account of the customer comprises locking the card account to block potential purchases falling within a predetermined category.

“17. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for unlocking the card account comprise instructions for unlocking the card account for use in performing one or more additional potential purchases falling in a same category as the potential purchase.

“18. The non-transitory, computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for unlocking the card account comprise instructions for unlocking the card account for use in performing all potential purchases from the merchant.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Billman, Bradly Jay. Systems and method for providing card account controls and purchase impact information. U.S. Patent Number 11443324, filed June 12, 2018, and published online on September 13, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11443324.PN.&OS=PN/11443324RS=PN/11443324

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