Facebook has moved the country’s patent office seeking patent for its invention relating to a transactional payment system that allows users of messaging system to send and receive electronic payments. It appears as a significant step, especially in the wake of India’s big thrust on digital money transactions. The social networking site filed the application at the Chennai patent office on May 5 and subsequently it was published in the Patent Journal on May 12. According to the patent filing by Facebook, the invention relates to systems and methods that provide a transactional payment system. In particular, the transactional payment system allows users of
According to the patent filing by Facebook, the invention relates to systems and methods that provide a transactional payment system. In particular, the transactional payment system allows users of messaging system to send and receive electronic payments to and from other users of the messaging system.
The company said that a messaging application on a client device can receive payment information input such as a payment amount and payment method, from a sender for making a payment to a recipient. The application can send a payment message including the payment information to a messaging system and the messaging system coordinates a payment process based on the payment information.
During the payment process, the messaging system can provide status updates to the sender and receiver of the payment via status messages that are included in a message thread corresponding to the sender and the recipient, Facebook said. The company in its patent document said that in theory, the concept of using a payment application on a mobile device to electronically transfer money provides a convenient method of transferring money between users. Conventional payment applications, however, have several drawbacks that often cause frustration, confusion, and result in a payment process that is often more time consuming than it is worth.
Facebook said that many conventional payment applications require the use of card readers that connect to another computing device, such as a mobile device. The conventional payment applications that use a card reader have several disadvantages. For example, a user must carry and always have the card reader, in addition to the mobile device, in order to receive a payment. In addition, the card reader and the connection between the mobile device and card reader are often prone to failure. Card readers also lack public trust due to the ability of criminals to use card readers to steal sensitive credit card information.
Furthermore, payment applications that require card readers are typically not suitable for processing remote payments, it submitted.While other conventional payment applications do not use card readers, but are standalone payment services in which both the sender and the recipient of the payment must create an account specifically for the payment service. In many conventional payment applications, the sender, recipient, or both have to go through a time-consuming process of setting up an account, thereby causing the payment process to be inconvenient and burdensome, Facebook said in the patent filing.
In addition to setting up an account associated with a particular payment application, the payment process that many conventional payment applications use is complicated. Many conventional payment applications process a payment by sending a series of e-mails with links. Users are often required to click on the e-mail links to continue the payment process, such as accepting or denying a payment. Therefore, the payment processing steps are not intuitive and often cause confusion for the users.
