Payment system for automatic vending machines

• US 20020046123A1
• Filed: 10/15/2001
• Published: 04/18/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Officine Meccaniche F ILI Manea SRL
• Original Assignee: Officine Meccaniche F ILI Manea SRL
• Inventors: Nicolini, Antonio
• Application Number:
  US09/977,924
• Publication Number:
  US 20020046123A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/18
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/20 Point-of-sale [POS] network systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/4014 Identity check for transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/1347 Preprocessing; Feature extraction
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 9/37 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voice recognition

Abstract

A payment system for automatic vending machines is characterized in that it comprises at least one microprocessor or electronic chip (10), which can be suitably programmed so as to univocally identify the fingerprints (30) of each user of said machines, by memorization in memory elements (40) and comparison of certain scanning points of their images to effect electronic identification.

Claims

1. A payment system for automatic vending machines, characterized in that it comprises at least one microprocessor or electronic chip (10), which can be suitably programmed so as to univocally identify the fingerprints (30) of each user of said machines, by memorization in memory elements (40) and comparison of certain scanning points of their images to effect electronic identification.

2. The payment system according to claim 1, characterized in that said memorized fingerprints (30) are associated with a price corresponding to the product selected by said user, by means of a pushbutton device (52), so as to progressively scale down its value (70) on the basis of the products consumed (90).

3. The payment system according to claim 1, characterized in that said fingerprints (30) are acquired by means of an electronic acquisition apparatus (20) and identification and comparison procedure (60).

4. The payment system according to claim 2, characterized in that said push-button device (52) comprises at least one key (51) for controlling the remaining credit, by the pressing of at least one fingertip, whose fingerprint (30) has been memorized.

5. The payment system according to claim 1, characterized in that said fingerprints (30) are acquired by means of an electronic processing of the images relating to the geometric form of the fingerprint (30).

6. The payment system according to claim 1, characterized in that said micro-processor (10) transmits the reading data of said fingerprints (30) to said memory (40), which acts as an archive, associating the amounts paid by said users to the digital images of the fingerprints (30) corresponding to said users.