SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING A PUBLIC LEDGER FOR GIFT CARD TRANSACTIONS

摘要

Disclosed is a method for providing fraud protection and transaction tracing for gift card accounts through use of a public blockchain ledger. Digital gift cards are associated with tokens which are passed between user accounts. The users do not obtain direct access to the debit codes assigned to the gift cards and are instead provided with variable authentication codes for use in merchant purchases. The variable authentication code is used by a merchant to obtain a reference to an actual debit code held by a web server. Numerous types of transactions are published to the blockchain ledger including initial purchases, reserving/claiming of debit codes, transfers of tokens between accounts, and depleting of gift card value associated with a token. Transactions published to the blockchain occur substantially simultaneously with a merchant purchase such that users may look up gift card values at any time to be assured each gift card is valid.

主权项

1. A method for tracing expendable debit card ownership comprising:
issuing a token by a server, the token representing a given monetary value to a specified merchant, the given monetary value is expendable via reference to a debit code representing a gift card, the debit code stored on the server; associating the token with a first account, wherein an account is accessible to an account user; issuing periodic variable authentication codes to the first account with the token, wherein referencing the most recently issued variable authentication code to the server directs the server to expend a selected amount of the given monetary value using the debit code at the discretion of the account user; transferring the association of the token from the first account to a second account; and publishing the transfer to a public ledger as a transfer record.