| 摘要 |
<p>A prepayment commodity supply system for use in the supply of utilities such as electricity, gas and water to a customer comprises a prepayment token, typically a memory card or a smart card, into which credit data representative of an amount of credit or an amount of the commodity is entered by a vending machine in return for payment by the customer. The token is then inserted by the customer into a commodity supply control device, typically a meter, to enable the supply of an amount of the commodity determined by the credit data. The system includes simple (or "dumb") vending machines which are cheap enough to be installed in post offices, corner shops and the like, and each of which communicates by phone with a more sophisticated "special action partner". The special action partner periodically downloads a "grey list" of customers/tokens requiring some kind of special action to its dumb terminals, and each of the latter, on recognising a customer/token on the grey list, automatically contacts the special action partner, which then performs the special action via the dumb terminal. A particular special action is the creation of a duplicate token to replace a lost token, achieved by using an authorising code number which is given to the customer when he reports the loss and which is then entered into the dumb terminal along with a blank token to enable the special action partner to create the duplicate via the dumb terminal. <IMAGE></p> |
