At&t Bell Laboratories

At&t Ipm Corp.

Julie M Ladieu-Walton

Richard M Harris

David C McChristian

Jean Atkins

Pamela J Lauber

Barbara J Kittredge

Angela R Gore

Nandakishore A Albal

Daniel D Cottrell

Kathleen M Ahearn

Hamid C Razavi

When a telephone caller charges a call to a commercial credit card an announcement which includes the name of the credit card issuer is supplied to the caller after the validation of the credit card. In a preferred embodiment, the issuer of the commercial credit card is identified, for purposes of announcing its name, by examining the prefix code of a credit card number supplied by the calling party. Also, in the preferred embodiment, not only the issuer of the commercial credit card but also the name of the telephone carder is supplied as part of the announcement given prior to connecting the calling station to the called station after validation of the credit card. An illustrative such announcement is 'Thank you for using AT&T and for charging this call to your American Express card'.

Method and apparatus for processing telephone calls charged to credit

A business performs a credit check on a customer's credit card number by utilizing the D-channel of an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) facility. The ISDN facility connects the business to a telecommunications network, which utilizes signaling system number 7 (SS7). Specifically, the ISDN Q.931 protocol is modified to allow the Q.931 FACILITY message to include: a) credit check request, b) a call reference number, and c) the customer's credit card number. This information is sent, via the ISDN D-channel, to the telecommunications network, which passes the information, via an SS7 Transaction Capability Application Part (TCAP) message, to a credit checking data base. A result from the credit checking data based is then passed back through the telecommunications network to the business on the D-channel of the ISDN facility.

ISDN credit checking

When a telephone caller charges a call to a commercial credit card, an announcement which includes the name of the credit card issuer is supplied to the caller after the validation of the credit card. In a preferred embodiment, the issuer of the commercial credit card is identified, for purposes of announcing its name, by examining the prefix code of a credit card number supplied by the calling party. Also, in the preferred embodiment, not only the issuer of the commercial credit card but also the name of the telephone carrier is supplied as part of the announcement given prior to connecting the calling station to the called station after validation of the credit card. An illustrative such announcement is 'Thank you for using AT&T and for charging this call to your American Express card'.

Apparatus and method of controlling a telephone network to establish connections between calling and called telephone stations in accordance with dialed telephone numbers identified by ones of a plurality of calling party credit cards. The apparatus responds to the receipt of a telephone number and a credit card number from a calling telephone by identifying a company having issued the credit card assigned the received credit card number. A data link connection is established with a data base maintained by the identified company and the received credit card number is transmitted to the identified company during the call sequence for a determination of the validity of the received credit card number. The apparatus controls the telephone network to establish a network connection between the calling telephone and a telephone identified by the called telephone number upon receiving validation of the validity of the credit card and to establish a network connection between the calling telephone and an announcement circuit stating that the identified credit card cannot be used for telephone calls upon receiving non-validation of the credit card or upon identifying the credit card as fraudulent.

Telephone network credit card calling apparatus and method of operation

Growing community of inventors

Lawrenceville, NJ, United States of America

Julie M Ladieu-Walton