A VENDING MACHINE FOR VENDING AGE-RESTRICTED PRODUCTS USING A CREDIT CARD AND ASSOCIATED METHODS

摘要

An vending machine (10) for vending age-restricted products (14) is disclosed. The vending machine uses a customer's credit card to obtain age verification information from a consumer reporting agency via a modem (30). In a preferred embodiment, a customer inputs customer information, preferably a credit card number, into the vending machine (10). The vending machine (10) obtains permission from the customer to use the customer information to retrieve the customers age. The age data is either retrieved from a server farm (28) containing the age of the customer associated with the credit card or may be retrieved via a modem (30) from the database of a consumer reporting agency (32). The modem (30) connection allows the creditworthiness of the credit card to be checked via access to a credit card company database (32). If the age and credit card of the customer can be verified in this fashion, the vending machine (10) vends the product to the customer.