American Express Thinks Blockchains Might Be Able Help Prove Payments
American Express is looking for better ways for exchanges and another patent filing recommends the financial services might take a gander at blockchain as a major aspect of a conceivable arrangement.
In a patent application launched by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a week ago, American Express Travel Related Services portrays utilizing a “blockchain-based system” in order to receive “payment confirmation including a transaction amount and a merchant identifier.”
The reason behind the concept is aimed at what AmEx calls the “limited” number of alternatives for creating quality proof that payments occur amongst vendors and their clients “beyond a receipt or ticket.”
AmEx’s patent features the tech’s part in holding “transaction data, contract data, proof-of-payment data, identification data, and/or other information as desired,” with the idea being that a blockchain network – possibly a public one – would serve as an extra layer of proof for transactions that take place on AmEx’s network.”
American Express says that information can be utilized to “unlock a hotel, rental or shared economy property door using the card (e.g., that was used for the payment) to look up proof of payment on a blockchain.” Moreover, “the system may be leveraged to provide ticketless access to venues (e.g., movie theater, sports event, concert, etc.) to a customer,” and so forth.
While the choice on whether this blockchain framework will be facilitated on a private, open or consortium network is up for something to look into, the application highlights how “public networks may leverage the cumulative computing power of the network to improve security.”
This patent application by American Express is the most recent in a series that have been propelled as early as October of last year when a similar branch of the organization petitioned for an alternate patent identified with client rewards.
Fast forward to today and the firm has without a doubt started introductory preliminaries with a custom Membership Rewards program for cardholders, utilizing Hyperledger’s blockchain innovation, which it banded together with last January.
