{
  "patent_number": "US 10198731",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Square Uses Your Phone's Location to Verify Credit Card Payments",
  "original_title": "Performing actions based on the location of mobile device during a card swipe",
  "summary": "A system that uses GPS data from a customer's smartphone to confirm they are physically present at a store during a credit card transaction to reduce fraud.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a method for verifying that a customer is actually at a merchant's store when they use their credit card. The system first calculates the approximate location of a card reader by aggregating GPS data from many customers' phones who have previously shopped there. When a new transaction occurs, the system pings the customer's phone to get its current GPS coordinates at the exact moment the card is swiped. By comparing the phone's location to the established location of the card reader, the system determines if the customer is truly present, which allows the merchant to skip extra fraud checks.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover fraud detection methods that rely solely on card-present indicators without GPS verification.",
    "Does not cover systems that track location using Bluetooth beacons or Wi-Fi triangulation instead of GPS.",
    "Does not cover transactions where the customer's mobile device is not linked to their payment card in the merchant's database.",
    "Does not cover the physical design or internal circuitry of the card reader itself."
  ],
  "filed": "2014-02-18",
  "granted": "2019-02-05",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Square Inc",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/square-inc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Shawn Morel",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/shawn-morel"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nathan Spindel",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/nathan-spindel"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nefaur Rahman Khandker",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/nefaur-rahman-khandker"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 9,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "software",
    "finance",
    "ecommerce"
  ],
  "abstract": "Various embodiments are related to apparatuses and methods for basing actions on a location of a card swipe. A computer system receives information indicative of a location of a mobile device associated with a customer at a time corresponding to a swipe of a payment card at a card reader of a merchant. The location information can indicate, for example, the location of the mobile device as being at a GPS coordinate, or at a merchant's place of business. When the location information indicates that the mobile device and the card swipe are located near to each other, or are both located at the same merchant's place of business, a reduced level of fraud analysis can be used when authorizing the purchase transaction. A targeted ad can be sent to a mobile device associated with the customer based on the location of the card reader used for the card swipe.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10198731/shopify-e-commerce-platform",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10198731/shopify-e-commerce-platform/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US10198731",
  "relatedPatents": []
}