American Express Patents Blockchain System To Send Receipt Images

By Sumedha Bose

A new blockchain-based system has recently been patented by the financial services giant American Express (Amex). This new system will allegedly allow users to capture and send the image of a receipt.

(Read more about blockchain based patents here)

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) made the patent filing public on Nov. 13. It is listed as American Express Travel Related Services Co., Inc. which happens to be the parent company’s travel subsidiary. The filing titled “Linking digital images with related records,” is really proving to be a novel use of blockchain technology.

This system would allow for the receiving, recording and transmitting of the image of a receipt. The user can capture the image of a receipt with their cell phones and the system then via “optical character recognition,” deciphers the image and matches it with “related records,” namely transaction history.

The filing states that “data blocks”will be used and that “Any databases discussed herein may include relational, hierarchical, graphical, blockchain, or object-oriented structure and/or any other database configurations.”

The filing further elaborates on the various benefits of using blockchain technology for data storage:

“The blockchain structure may include a distributed database that maintains a growing list of data records. The blockchain may provide enhanced security because each block may hold individual transactions and the results of any blockchain executables.”

American Express has been really active with the use of blockchain in various sectors. Back in July, American Express Travel Related Services Co. had filed another patent for a blockchain-based system. That system was concerning authenticity of payments. It would automate proof-of-payments by encrypting payment payload data with a public key on an initial node of a blockchain.