{
  "patent_number": "US 10157378",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Square Prepares Digital Tabs for Customers Before They Arrive",
  "original_title": "Anticipatory creation of point-of-sale data structures",
  "summary": "A system that lets merchants create a digital customer tab before a guest arrives, using reservation data to pre-load preferences and payment info for a faster checkout.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a way for point-of-sale (POS) systems to start a transaction record before a customer even walks through the door. When a customer makes a reservation or joins a waitlist, the system creates a data structure—essentially a digital tab—that stores the customer's ID and arrival time. When the system detects the customer has arrived, it automatically displays this pre-populated tab on the merchant's screen. This allows staff to instantly see the customer's preferences or pre-saved payment information, making the actual ordering and payment process much faster.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover general reservation systems that only track time and headcount without linking to a POS transaction data structure.",
    "Does not cover automated payment processing that occurs without a merchant-side POS device display.",
    "Does not cover systems that rely solely on proximity beacons without a prior reservation or waitlist request."
  ],
  "filed": "2016-08-31",
  "granted": "2018-12-18",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Square Inc",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/square-inc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Dan Simms",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/dan-simms"
    },
    {
      "name": "Ryder Moody",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/ryder-moody"
    },
    {
      "name": "Derrick Huhn",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/derrick-huhn"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jonathan Andrew Wolter",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/jonathan-andrew-wolter"
    },
    {
      "name": "Mathew Wilson",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/mathew-wilson"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 3,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "software",
    "ecommerce"
  ],
  "abstract": "Techniques and arrangements for analyzing previous tickets of a customer at different merchants—specifying interactions of the customer at the different merchants—to determine subsequent recommendations to send to a particular merchant in real-time when the customer is located at the particular merchant. Other techniques and arrangements facilitate annotation of merchant tickets by the merchants to enrich the data maintained by the tickets and, in some instances, to enhance the described real-time recommendations. Still other techniques and arrangements create a merchant ticket for recording interactions between a merchant and customer upon the customer creating a reservation at the merchant for a specified future time, or being added to a waitlist of the merchant. Upon the customer arriving at the merchant proximate to the specified future time, the merchant may use the created ticket to track items ordered by the merchants, track tenders used to pay for items, and the like.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10157378/stripe-connect",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10157378/stripe-connect/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US10157378",
  "relatedPatents": []
}