Method and apparatus for maintaining a customer database using license plate scanning

摘要

An apparatus is provided for generating an image of a license plate and determining license plate characters from the image. Then, a database is searched to determine if there is a customer record that corresponds to the license plate characters. If so, the customer record is retrieved and information about the customer is available. Otherwise, a customer record is created. The created customer record corresponds to the license plate characters and stores transaction data that represents a transaction.