SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PAYMENT CARD INDUSTRY ENTERPRISE ACCOUNT NUMBER ELIMINATION

• US 20090294527A1
• Filed: 06/02/2009
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Transform Sr Brands, LLC (ESL Investments, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Sears Brands LLC (Sears Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Brabson, Jim, Ritscher, Marie
• Granted Patent: US 8,651,374 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 235/380
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/24 Credit schemes, i.e. "pay after"
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/385 using an alias or single-use codes

Abstract

A system and method replaces credit card numbers in systems that are customer facing with token Ids to thereby reduce exposure to credit card number theft.

Claims

1. A computer-readable media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for providing payment card industry enterprise account number elimination wherein the instructions perform steps comprising:

receiving a credit card number;

substituting in real-time a token id for the credit card number; and

using the token id in applications in lieu of the credit card number.

2. The computer-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the token id has a number of digits equal to a number of digits provided to the credit card.

3. The computer-readable media as recited in claim 2, wherein the token id has a bin that is different than a bin of the credit card.

4. A system for providing payment card industry enterprise account number elimination, comprising:

a vault infrastructure in communication with client facing applications, the vault infrastructure having programming for receiving a credit card number;

substituting in real-time a token id for the credit card number; and

for causing the token id to be used by the applications in lieu of the credit card number.

5. The system as recited in claim 4, wherein the token id has a number of digits equal to a number of digits provided to the credit card.

6. The system as recited in claim 5, wherein the token id has a bin that is different than a bin of the credit card.

7. The system as recited in claim 4, comprising a mini-vault in communication with the vault, the mini-vault being adapted to locally cache token ids and credit card numbers to help distribute calls to the vault over the course of a day.

8. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the mini-vault resides on a customer facing system server.

9. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the mini-vault communicates with the vault via batch transfers.

10. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the cached token ids and the credit card numbers are incapable of being correlated to one another.

11. The system as recited in claim 7, wherein the cached credit card numbers are encrypted.