Payments Patent Wrap: How Does A Payment Device Know Whose Voice Command To Obey?

In this week's look at interesting payments patents issued and/or applied for, Amazon and Visa are the guests of honor. Amazon was issued a patent on Tuesday (Feb. 9) for a way to help POS and other systems differentiate different people, when they are all giving voice commands. Amazon: POS, listen to the sound of my voice. No, not her voice. My voice.

Visa was issued a patent on Tuesday (Feb. 9) for ways to identify one user that works with multiple payments devices. The problem? "Each portable payment device associated with a single account within a payment processing system is distinguished using track data. The track data from the portable payment device is read at each of a plurality of merchant point of sale terminals (POS). Rather than relying on the PAN alone, a merchant may utilizes the track data, or a proxy thereof, as the unique identifier for the portable payment device," Visa's patent filing said.