Point-of-sale customer identification system
Point-of-sale customer identification is provided. One embodiment is a merchant teminal comprising: a scanner for scanning a personal identification document corresponding to a customer requesting a point-of-sale transaction; and logic configured to identify customer data from a scanned image of the personal identification document. Another embodiment is a method implemented by a merchant terminal comprising: scanning a personal identification document corresponding to a customer; and generating customer data from a scanned image of the personal identification document.
1 . A merchant terminal comprising:
a scanner for scanning a personal identification document corresponding to a customer requesting a point-of-sale transaction; and
logic configured to identify customer data from a scanned image of the personal identification document.
2 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , further comprising at least one template corresponding to at least one type of personal identification document.
3 . The merchant terminal of claim 2 , wherein the at least one type of personal identification document comprises one of a driver's license, personal identification card, and a passport.
4 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , wherein the scanner comprises a templated scanner configured to automatically determine the type of personal identification document being scanned.
5 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , wherein the logic configured to identify customer data from the scanned image comprises software stored in memory and executed by a processor.
6 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , wherein the logic configured to identify customer data from the scanned image comprises an optical character recognition (OCR) engine.
7 . The merchant terminal of claim 6 , wherein the OCR engine is configured to generate a text file containing text from the personal information document.
8 . The merchant terminal of claim 7 , further comprising logic configured to generate customer data based on a comparison of the text file to a document template corresponding to the personal identification document.
9 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , further comprising logic configured to process the point-of-sale transaction using the customer data.
10 . The merchant terminal of claim 9 , wherein the point-of-sale transaction comprises one of a pre-paid card purchase, a point-of-sale purchase, a pre-paid card acceptance, a credit card acceptance, a debit card acceptance, a card-to-card transaction, and a bill payment.
11 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , further comprising logic configured to identify at least one scanning error in the customer data.
12 . The merchant terminal of claim 11 , wherein the scanning error comprises an optical character recognition error.
13 . The merchant terminal of claim 11 , further comprising logic configured to enable a user to manually input new customer data to correct the at least one scanning error.
14 . The merchant terminal of claim 1 , further comprising logic configured to validate the customer data.
15 . A method of processing a point-of-sale transaction at a merchant terminal, the method comprising:
scanning a personal identification document corresponding to a customer requesting a financial service at a merchant terminal;
generating a scanned image of the personal identification document;
identifying character data in the scanned image; and
comparing the character data to a document template corresponding to the personal identification document to generate customer data.
16 . The method of claim 15 , wherein the generating a scanned image comprises performing an optical character recognition algorithm.
17 . The method of claim 15 , further comprising automatically determining a type of document of which the personal indentification document comprises.
18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the automatically determining the type of document comprises comparing the scanned image to a document template.
19 . The method of claim 15 , wherein the financial service comprises at least one of a pre-paid card purchase, a point-of-sale purchase, a pre-paid card acceptance, a credit card acceptance, a debit card acceptance, a card-to-card transaction, and a bill payment.
20 . The method of claim 15 , further comprising identifying at least one scanning error and enabling a user to manually input new customer data to correct the at least one scanning error.
21 . A method implemented by a merchant terminal, the method comprising:
scanning a personal identification document corresponding to a customer; and
generating customer data from a scanned image of the personal identification document.
22 . A financial services system comprising:
a scanner configured to generate a digital image of a customer's personal identification document;
an optical character recognition (OCR) engine for converting the digital image into a text file; and
logic configured to generate customer data associated with the text file by comparing the text file to a document template of the personal identification document.
23 . The financial services system of claim 22 , further comprising a validation module configured to determine at least one OCR error.
24 . The financial services system of claim 23 , wherein the validation module is further configured to prompt a user to input new customer data corresponding to the at least one OCR error.
25 . A point-of-sale merchant terminal comprising:
means for scanning a customer's personal identification document; and
means for identifying customer data from the scanned image of the personal identification document.
26 . The point-of-sale merchant terminal of claim 25 , further comprising means for providing a financial service based on the identified customer data.