Electronic transaction card
View Patent ↗An electronic transaction card communicates with an add-on slot of an intelligent electronic device. The add-on slot may be a memory card slot. The intelligent electronic device may be a mobile phone or other device with or without network connectivity. The electronic transaction card may have magnetic field producing circuitry compatible with magnetic card readers, smartcard circuitry, other point-of-sale interfaces, or any combination thereof.
1. An apparatus comprising:
a stripe to communicate with a magnetic card reader; and
a memory card interface to communicate with an intelligent electronic device, the memory card interface being compatible with an add-on slot in an intelligent electronic device;
wherein the apparatus has dimensions smaller than a credit card, and wherein the stripe includes circuitry to produce at least one time-varying magnetic field.
2. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising a processing element coupled to the interface and to the stripe.
3. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising an embedded swipe sensor to sense when the stripe is swiped through a magnetic card reader.
4. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising nonvolatile memory accessible by the intelligent electronic device.
5. An apparatus comprising:
a stripe to communicate with a magnetic card reader;
a memory card interface to communicate with an intelligent electronic device, the memory card interface being compatible with an add-on slot in an intelligent electronic device;
a processing element coupled to the interface and to the stripe; and
a memory element to hold programming information for the stripe;
wherein the apparatus has dimensions smaller than a credit card.
6. An apparatus comprising:
means for communicating through a memory card slot in an intelligent electronic device;
circuitry for producing at least one time-varying magnetic field to represent financial transaction data; and
means for storing the financial transaction data.
7. The apparatus of claim 6 further including software to be installed on the intelligent electronic device.
8. The apparatus of claim 6 further comprising nonvolatile memory accessible through the means for communicating through a memory card slot.
9. The apparatus of claim 6 further comprising means to sense whether the memory card has been swiped through a magnetic card reader.
10. An apparatus comprising:
means for communicating through a memory card slot in an intelligent electronic device;
means for producing at least one time-varying magnetic field to represent financial transaction data;
means for storing the financial transaction data; and
software to be installed on the intelligent electronic device, wherein the software includes a module for single transaction account number generation.
11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the software is configured to run on a mobile phone.
12. A memory card comprising:
a memory card slot interface; and
circuitry including at least one conductor for carrying current for producing a time-varying magnetic field compatible with a magnetic card reader.
13. The memory card of claim 12 wherein the circuitry is configured to produce a plurality of time-varying magnetic fields compatible with a point-of-sale transaction device.
14. The memory card of claim 13 further comprising nonvolatile memory accessible via the memory card slot interface.
15. The memory card of claim 12 further comprising a processing device coupled to the memory card slot interface and the circuitry for producing a time-varying magnetic field.
16. The memory card of claim 15 further comprising a software component that when executed by the processing device causes the circuitry to produce the time-varying magnetic field.
17. The memory card of claim 15 further comprising software to be transferred to a device other than the memory card.