DESC:TITLE OF THE INVENTION
System and method for issuing rewards

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
[001] The present invention relates to issuing rewards.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[002] Merchants often run loyalty or rewards programs to retain existing customers, attract new customers and thereby improve sales.
[003] A common reward program is where a unique code is applied or scanned while generating a final bill to offer a flat discount or a free gift or a reward. Such unique codes have to be firstly generated and provided to all customers or marketing partners, and the customers are then required to produce the unique code at the time of billing to avail the reward. Thus, in cases where the customer cannot produce the unique code, the opportunity to avail/obtain the reward would be lost. Furthermore, at the merchant end, these codes need to be applied or scanned by a billing system before generating a final bill. The billing system of the merchant would thus require modifications or alteration so as to process the unique code. Scanning the unique code will require special hardware such as code scanners. The rewards programme thus requires changes and interventions at a system level and may also require training of the employees of the merchant to run the rewards programme. In this regard, deployment of reward programmes, especially for merchants with multiple number of outlets would be time consuming and complicated. There are also chances of execution and operational failure leading to poor customer experience. Another known rewards program is where a flat discount is offered upon using a particular type of bank card. However, such rewards target a specific bank’s customer base and need the respective bank’s approval, and thus may not be desirable from a merchant customer engagement perspective.
[004] Merchants often run in-house loyalty programs where they register their customers on their billing system with a unique customer identification for example - mobile number, physical loyalty card or digital loyalty application. Then on subsequent visits they invite customers to use the customer identification and dispense rewards or discounts linked to repeat purchases.
[005] In the solutions discussed hereinabove, rewards are system dependent requiring modification of systems on merchant side or dependent on customer merchant interaction or dependent on unique codes or requires registration with loyalty solutions. Also, managing these rewards programs is a time consuming and expensive process as it requires system level changes and may also require training of personnel to implement the rewards program. Hence, there is a need in the art for a solution which addresses at least the aforementioned problems.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[006] The present invention, in one aspect provides to a system for issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant. The system includes a host system; plurality of merchant terminals registered with the host system for offering rewards, each merchant terminal identified via a merchant code; and at least one user device associated with a user account, the user device configured to: monitor messages received by the user device to identify a transaction related message, the transaction related message including plurality of parameters including at-least the merchant code; analyse the transaction related message to determine the merchant and the rewards offered by the merchant from the host system; and apply or transfer rewards to the user account of the user.
[007] In another aspect, the present invention discloses a method for issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant. The method includes the steps of: monitoring messages received by a user device to identify transaction related message, the transaction related message comprising plurality of parameters including at-least the merchant code; analysing the transaction related message to determine the merchant and the rewards offered by the merchant; and transferring or applying the reward to a user account registered with the user device.
[008] In a further embodiment, the method includes associating the user account with bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user.
[009] In yet another embodiment, the method includes parsing through messages stored on the user device to retrieve and display information of bank cards, credit cards, debit cards and RTP system accounts of the user.
[010] In yet another embodiment, the transaction related message includes parameters such as merchant code, sender ID, bank name, payment method, transaction type, amount, and transaction time.
[011] In an embodiment of the invention, the merchant code is either a bank generated code, or a Real Time Payment (RTP) system ID, or a host system assigned code.
[012] In another embodiment of the invention, the user account is associated with bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[013] Reference will be made to embodiments of the invention, examples of which may be illustrated in accompanying figures. These figures are intended to be illustrative, not limiting. Although the invention is generally described in context of these embodiments, it should be understood that it is not intended to limit the scope of the invention to these particular embodiments.
Figure 1 shows a system for issuing rewards in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.
Figure 2 shows a flow diagram of a method for issuing rewards in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
[014] The present invention is directed towards issuing rewards to users or customers without any system level changes at merchant end allowing the invention to be adapted across various merchant outlets. Further, users as well do not require any vouchers or physical reward cards or reward codes to avail of the rewards.
[015] Figure 1 shows an illustrative representation of a system for issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant. According to the invention, and as seen in the figure, the system has plurality of merchant terminals T (T1 to Tn), registered with a host system 10 for offering rewards, each merchant terminal identified via a merchant code. Further, the system has at least one user device U1 which is associated with a user account. The user device is operated by a user or a customer. Further, as shown the system is in communication with one or more third-party servers 20 such as bank server, a real-time payment (RTP) system server, etc.
[016] In an embodiment of the invention, the merchant terminal is any electronic device or portable device such as a smartphone, laptop, tablet, PC, etc comprising of at least one or more processors, a memory, a storage unit, a communication module, a display, etc and is configured to record transactions or payments received by the merchant and offer rewards to the users. The user can transact or pay the merchant via any bank card, credit card, debit card, wallet or RTP system.
[017] As shown, the one or more merchant terminals are associated with a single merchant M, and each such merchant terminal of the single merchant is registered with the host system for offering rewards to the users. The merchant terminals may be in the same or different locations. In an embodiment, the merchant terminals may be connected with a centralized merchant server. According to the invention, the merchant terminals and/or the centralized merchant server of each merchant are registered with the host system and identified via a merchant code. In an embodiment of the invention, the merchant code is either a bank generated code or a RTP system ID or a host system assigned code and is uniquely associated with each merchant so as to offer rewards to the users transacting with any merchant terminal of the same merchant. Such merchant terminals of the merchant can be at different locations. Advantageously, to offer rewards there is no system modification required at any of the merchant terminals or the centralized merchant server.
[018] In an embodiment of the invention, the merchant terminals connect with banking servers or RTP system servers directly or through transaction devices such as point of sale devices. The merchant terminals allow various users to transact, purchase with the merchant, and for each such transaction the user earns rewards. In an embodiment, the user account is associated with a bank card, credit card, debit card, wallet or RTP system of the user. Upon a user transacting with the merchant, a transaction related message is generated and sent to the user device. The transaction related message can be generated by the bank server or the RTP server or the merchant system, or the host system. In an embodiment of the invention, the transaction related message comprises various parameters such as merchant code, sender ID, bank name, payment method, transaction type, amount, transaction time etc. In this regard, the transaction related message is only sent to a registered user.
[019] In an embodiment of the invention, the user device is an electronic device or portable device such as a smartphone, laptop, tablet, PC, etc. comprising of at least one or more processors, a memory, a storage unit, a communication module, a display or an interactive display, input/output units, etc. The user device is installed with a dedicated application stored on the storage unit which when executed by the processor allows the user device to connect and communicate with at least the host system. In an embodiment of the invention, the user is required to register with the host system by creating a user account with at-least a phone number. Additional information like name, age, email, location etc. may be required by the host system for transactional and legal purposes. The user account is uniquely associated with each user and can be accessed with unique credentials or authentication techniques. Further, each user account is associated with or linked with bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user. The bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user can be fed in by the user. In an embodiment of the invention, the system is configured to parse through messages stored on the user device, and retrieve and display information of bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, RTP system accounts of the user. In this regard, messages in relation to bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, wallets, RTP system accounts have limited information whereby card numbers or account numbers are masked. The user device is configured to allow the user to select/confirm the identified bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, wallets RTP system accounts to be linked with the user account. Accordingly, once the user account is created, the user device communicates with the host system to receive rewards offered by the merchant when a linked bank card, credit/debit card, wallet or UPI bank account is used to transact. In an embodiment, the transaction related message generated upon the user transacting with the merchant terminal is received by the user device.
[020] According to the invention, the user device associated with the user account through the dedicated application is configured to monitor incoming messages received by the user device to determine whether a transaction related message has been received by the user device. In an embodiment, the transaction related message is received on the user device through the communication module via SMS/MMS/notification/third party application message/email message. As discussed hereinabove, the transaction related message comprises of parameters such as merchant code, sender ID, bank name, transaction type, etc. The transaction related message from incoming messages is identified by the processor based on at least the merchant code and/or sender ID. According to the invention, the transaction related messages which are identified, and further processed by analysing the parameters to determine the relevant offer/scheme/reward available on the host system associated with the parameters. The relevant offer/scheme/reward is transferred or applied to the user account registered with the user device to offer the reward or loyalty scheme. The rewards/loyalty schemes may then be transferred to user bank accounts or applied to the any wallet linked with the user account.
[021] Figure 2 shows a flow diagram illustrating a method of issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In order to perform such a method, a system such as the system shown in figure 1 may be used. The method requires plurality of merchant terminals to be registered with a host system/server via merchant codes. The merchant code is a unique code associated with the merchant for offering rewards to users transacting with the merchant. Further, one or more users are registered with the host system via a user device. The user devices once registered are configured to retrieve and parse transaction related messages which are generated as and when the user transacts with one of the merchant terminals of the merchant. According to the invention, the method to issue rewards starts at step 2A, where messages received by the user device are monitored by the user device to identify the transaction related messages. In an embodiment, the transaction related message is received on the user device via SMS/MMS/notification/third party application message/email message. As discussed hereinabove, the transaction related message comprises of parameters such as merchant code, sender ID, bank name, payment method, transaction type, amount, transaction time etc. The method identifies the transaction related message from incoming messages based on parameters like sender ID and/or merchant code. The transaction related message is analysed at step 2B to determine parameters of the transaction related message. At step 2C, the relevant offer/ scheme/ reward is determined based on the parameters. The relevant offer/scheme/reward is transferred or applied at step 2D to the user account registered with the user device to offer the reward or loyalty scheme. The rewards/loyalty schemes may then be credited to the user account. These rewards could be in the form of cash transferable to bank accounts or loyalty points.
[022] In an embodiment, the transaction related message is analysed by the host system or the user device. For the transaction related message to be analysed by the host system, the user device upon identifying the transaction related message is configured to establish a communication link with the host system and transfers the transaction related message to the host system.
[023] Further, prior to identifying the transaction related message, the user device is configured to filter messages such that only transaction related messages are analysed by the system. The user device is configured to filter the message based on whether the message is received on a registered user device and from a whitelisted sender ID. A whitelisted sender is usually a bank which has issued the linked credit card, debit card or RTP system ID. The message is further filtered to exclude blacklisted words that would indicate that the message may be from a whitelisted sender but does not contain information regarding a transaction. An example is a message sent by a bank containing an OTP to enable a transaction. Accordingly, messages with sensitive information or content are rejected by the system and are not analysed by the system.
[024] Advantageously, the present invention issues rewards instantly to a user upon completion of transaction without any change at merchant end allowing merchants spread across geographies to launch campaigns instantly without any operational changes or requirements. Further, users are not required to apply voucher or reward codes or use loyalty cards to avail of the rewards offered by the merchant offering a seamless experience to the users creating loyalty and a wider user base for the merchant.
[025] The foregoing description of the invention has been set merely to illustrate the invention and is not intended to be limiting. Since the modifications of the disclosed embodiments incorporating the spirit and substance of the invention may occur to the person skilled in the art, the invention should be construed to include everything within the scope of the disclosure. ,CLAIMS:WE CLAIM:
1. A system for issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant, the system comprising:
a host system (10);
plurality of merchant terminals (T1 – Tn) registered with the host system for offering rewards, each merchant terminal identified via a merchant code; and
at least one user device (U1) associated with a user account, the user device configured to:
monitor messages received by the user device to identify a transaction related message, the transaction related message comprising plurality of parameters including at-least the merchant code;
analyse the transaction related message to determine the merchant and the rewards offered by the merchant from the host system; and
apply or transfer rewards to the user account of the user.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1 or 2, wherein the merchant code is either a bank generated code, or a Real Time Payment (RTP) system ID, or a host system assigned code.

3. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the user account is associated with bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user.

4. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the system is configured to parse through messages stored on the user device to retrieve and display information of bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, wallets and RTP system accounts of the user.

5. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the transaction related message comprises of sender ID, bank name, payment method, transaction type, amount, and transaction time.

6. A method for issuing rewards to a user transacting with a merchant, the method comprising the steps of:
monitoring messages received by a user device to identify transaction related message, the transaction related message comprising plurality of parameters including at-least the merchant code;
analysing the transaction related message to determine the merchant and the rewards offered by the merchant; and
transferring or applying the reward to a user account registered with the user device.

7. The method as claimed in claim 6, wherein the transaction related message received by the user device comprises of parameters such as merchant code, sender ID, bank name, payment method, transaction type, amount, and transaction time.

8. The method as claimed in claim 6 comprises the step of associating the user account with bank cards, credit cards, debit cards, loan accounts, wallets, and RTP system accounts of the user.

9. The method as claimed in claim 6 comprises the step of parsing through messages stored on the user device to retrieve and display information of bank cards, credit cards, debit cards and RTP system accounts of the user.
Dated this 15th day of May 2020

CYBERGENES INNOVATIONS PRIVATE LIMITED
By their Agent & Attorney

(Janaksinh Jhala)
of Khaitan & Co
Reg No IN/PA-2193