Image Processing For Credit Card Validation

Abstract

Systems, methods and devices described herein enable the enhancement of the security of online financial transactions by assessing the authenticity of payment instruments, such as credit cards, using video processing analysis. For example, systems, methods and devices are operable to assess various characteristics of credit cards from video data provided by a user. Additionally and/or alternatively, one or more card characteristics captured during an online transaction may be compared against one or more of the same characteristics available in a card database indexed by card issuer, and which stores credit card characteristics for a number of cards provided by various credit card issuers. Additionally and/or alternatively, one or more card characteristics captured during an online transaction may be compared against one or more of the same characteristics captured during previous transactions to verify that the credit card currently offered matches the card used in previous transactions.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method of verifying an online financial transaction using video data, the method comprising:
 at a device including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors:   receiving the video data including a representation of a payment instrument;   identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the received video data;   comparing one or more of the identified characteristics to corresponding verified characteristics to produce an assessment score;   determining whether the assessment score satisfies a validity threshold; and   providing an authorization indicator in response to the determination.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein:
 the authorization indicator indicates that the online transaction or service cannot be authorized in response to determining that the validity threshold is not reached; and   the authorization indicator indicates that the online transaction or service is authorized in response to determining the validity threshold is reached.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising initiating a remedial process in response to determining that the validity threshold is not reached. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving a transaction request; and   transmitting a request for the video data in response to receiving the transaction request.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the transaction request is received from a merchant application server. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising checking a timestamp of the received video data. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6 , further comprising requesting taking remedial action when the timestamp is not valid. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising checking location information associated with the received video data. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 8 , further comprising assessing:
 assessing whether the location information is out of the ordinary for payment instrument; and   providing a fraud report including the location information as an indication of where the suspected fraud is taking place.   
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 acquiring an image from the received video data;   applying an optical character recognition technique to the image; and   identifying payment instrument data from the image after applying the optical character recognition technique.   
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the video data includes identifying a change of shadow gradients across the surface of the card in the video stream data. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the video data includes identifying a change of a holographic image and/or a hologram on the payment instrument. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the video data includes identifying an edge thickness of the payment instrument. 
     
     
         14 . A computer-implemented method of verifying an online financial transaction using video data, the method comprising:
 at a device including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors:   receiving the video data including a representation of a payment instrument;   identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the received video data;   comparing the one or more identified characteristics to corresponding verified characteristics in order to determine whether there is a match based at least on one or more matching rules; and   providing an authorization indicator in response to the determination.   
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein:
 the authorization indicator indicates that the online transaction or service cannot be authorized in response to determining that there is no match for at least one of the matching rules.   
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 14 , further comprising initiating a remedial process in response to determining that there is no match. 
     
     
         17 . A system, for verifying an online financial transaction using video data, comprising:
 one or more processors; and   memory storing one or more programs to be executed by the one or more processors;   the one or more programs comprising instructions for:
 receiving the video data including a representation of a payment instrument; 
 identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the received video data; 
 comparing one or more of the identified characteristics to corresponding verified characteristics to produce an assessment score; 
 determining whether the assessment score satisfies a validity threshold; and 
 providing an authorization indicator in response to the determination. 
   
     
     
         18 . A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs configured for execution by a computer, the one or more programs comprising instructions for:
 receiving the video data including a representation of a payment instrument;   identifying one or more characteristics of the payment instrument from the received video data;   comparing one or more of the identified characteristics to corresponding verified characteristics to produce an assessment score;   determining whether the assessment score satisfies a validity threshold; and   providing an authorization indicator in response to the determination.   
     
     
         19 . A computer-implemented method of facilitating verification of a payment instrument for an online financial transaction using video data, the method comprising:
 at a device including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors:   obtaining video data including a representation of a payment instrument;   capturing an image of the payment instrument from the video stream;   applying OCR to optical character recognition (OCR) technique to the captured image in order to identify and extract the payment device details;   verifying that sufficient payment device details have been identified and extracted from the payment device;   transmit video data and payment device details to a verification system; and   receiving an authentication message from the verification system indicating whether or not the transaction is confirmed.   
     
     
         20 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 19 , further comprising of encrypting and compressing the video data and prior to transmission.