Patent: US8231055 Systems and methods for decoding card swipe signals

Plastic cards having a magnetic stripe embedded on one side of the card are prevalent in everyday commerce. These cards are used in various transactions such as to pay for purchases by using a credit card, a debit card, or a gasoline charge card. Although magnetic stripe cards are universally used by merchants, there is no way for an individual to take advantage of the card to receive a payment from another individual (who is not a merchant) by swiping the card through a simple reader attached to his/her mobile device.

The present invention describes a miniaturized card reader connected to a mobile device which facilitates a financial transaction between a payer and a payee. For example, one person may owe another person money for a debt, and the conventional way to pay the debt is to provide cash or a check. This invention allows the payer to swipe their magnetic stripe card through a reader connected to a mobile device. It allows anyone to become a merchant or customer without having to purchase an expensive card reader.

A new approach is proposed that contemplates systems and methods to enable an individual to complete a financial transaction by swiping a magnetic stripe card through a card reader connected to a mobile device. The size of the card reader is miniaturized to be portable for connection with the mobile device. The card reader is configured to reliably read data encoded in a magnetic strip of the card with minimum error in a single swipe and provide a signal that corresponds to the data read to the mobile device, which then decodes the incoming signal from the card reader and acts as a point-of-sale device to complete the financial transaction. Such an approach enables a person to become either a micro-merchant (payee) or a buyer/customer (payer) without having to purchase expensive card reader devices or software.

Patent Number	US8231055
Application Date	13 Oct 2010
Issue Date	31 Jul 2012
Assignee	Square, Inc
Inventor	Wen, Sam
International Classification	G06K7/08

Patent: US8231055 Systems and methods for decoding card swipe signals

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