Patent AU-2019100775-A4 (AU)
Title: Secure Receipt Transfer Protocol: Cryptosystem, Communication Protocol, Systems, Methods and Smartphone Applications for End-To-End Encrypted Transfer of Tamper-Resistant Receipts as an Enabler for Anonymously-Individualized Marketing and Loyalty Management with Preservation of Buyers’ Anonymity and Privacy
Inventor: SADLER HAMISH
IPC: H04L9/30
Filed: 2019-07-17
Granted: 2019-08-22
Abstract: Secure Receipt Transfer Protocol: Cryptosystem, Communication Protocol, Systems, Methods and Smartphone Applications for End-To-End Encrypted Transfer of Tamper-Resistant Receipts as an Enabler for Anonymously Individualized Marketing and Loyalty Management with Preservation of Buyers' Anonymity and Privacy Abstract A cryptosystem, including an end-to-end cryptographic messaging protocol to transfer receipts from receipt issuers to receipt recipients using anonymous digital signatures assuring anonymity, privacy and tamper-resistance for receipts, as wellas systems, methods and applications that facilitate an anonymously-individualized loyalty management and marketing paradigm are hereby disclosed under "Secure Receipt Transfer Protocol". As an end-to-end cryptographic messaging protocolbetween receipt issuers and receipt recipients, the protocol assures recipients'anonymity and privacy when receiving receipts against attackers, receipt issuers, and even intermediaries transferring data between issuers and recipients. It also provides tamper-resistance against receipt data through digital signatures. Despite anonymity preservation, the proposed protocol, systems and methods still enable receipt issuers to dice and slice their transactions data using Transaction Markers that are generated randomly and consistently as wellas anonymous signatures provided by receipt recipients at the time of receiving their receipts. Transaction Markers enable receipt issuers to extract useful grouping insights and intelligence out of their transactions and sales history data. We hereby propose the concept of "Abstract Anonymous Marketing Rules" that allow receipt issuers to reach out to customers with fully individualized but yet anonymous offers without being able to know the identity of such customers hence proposing the concept of "Anonymously Individualized Loyalty Management and Marketing Paradigm"for the first time. Despite such offers being dependent upon receipt recipients' purchase history the data of which is end-to-end encrypted and inaccessible to an intermediary, the protocol and the loyalty management/marketing method and tools still enable "mining"applicable Abstract Marketing Rules against receipt recipients'encrypted purchase history data locally and securely without any server-side processing. This paradigm assures recipients'anonymity against all 3 rdparties including receipt issuers, data transfer intermediaries and external attackers. This is equivalent to making "anonymity" and "individualization" possible at the same time in the context of loyalty management and marketing; a goal unachieved by this time without the use of techniqueslike zero knowledge proofs or ring signatures for set membership proofs. Background Paper receipts are a tremendous economic and environmental burden for the society and the planet. Every year, in the United States alone, up to 10 million trees are used to make the papers, 21 billion gallons of water are wasted making them, 686 million pounds of waste and 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide (C0 2) (the equivalent of one million cars on the road) are generated to support the concept of paper receipts (Breyer, 2019). The core problem to solve in an attempt to eliminate paper receipts is the extraction of receipt data from Point-Of-Sale (POS) or other relevant systems owned by receipt issuers and transferring them to receipt recipients securely, anonymously and privately. Our previous patent #2019100146 addresses the first aspect of the problem to extract data effectively and seamlesslyfrom POS systems without needing to change or integrate with them and without recipients having to provide their details, useful to eliminate the need to roll out new POS systems for businesses that cannot afford to do it, while partially addressing the second aspect of security, privacy and anonymity for receipt recipients. With paper receipts, the recipients have the liberty to enjoy full privacy and anonymity without having to provide details to receipt issuers to receive their receipts. Many existing attempts to solve the paper receipt problem are partially or fundamentally ignoring this privilege and inherently, under the mantra of convenience, somehow involve an intermediary who will maintain recipients' purchase history to use in the context of loyalty management and marketing as a side benefit. Notwithstanding the GeneralData Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the likely infeasibility of allowing such a use of the data collected from receipts for marketing and loyalty management, in certain jurisdictions, attempts are in progress to propose receipt digitization mechanisms without addressing the underlying privacy issues arising and sacrificing buyer's privacy and anonymity in the process. Our proposal, for the first time, proposes a method in which it becomes possible to preserve buyers'anonymity and privacy by performing end-to end encryption against receipt data and marking transactions with recipient-generated anonymous digital signatures, but yet, be able to "mine" individualized offers applicable to buyers without an intermediary or attackers being able to access buyers' purchase history. This is equivalent to making anonymity and individualization possible at the same time in the context of loyalty management and marketing. This is the greatest outcome of the proposal hence making Anonymously-Individualized Loyalty Management and Marketing Paradigm possible. DefineAbstract Anonymous Issuer's Portal Loyalty/MarketingRles I SPublicuze Abstract Issuer's Anonymous Portal User Loyalty/MarketingRules POS Operator Ap plita lily POS Sys-temS Individualized Deals Mined SDK Calls .- .- - - - - - - - - . Secure StorageRed pients p I Send end-to-end entrypd receipts, P OS SD K Libraries/ Iusing theS eture Receipt Protocol POSsD K Instante Figure 6. Data flow and actions showinghow individualizedloyalty and marketing deals are "mined" against the data that no one except the end user has accessto