Abstract

The present disclosure relates to a privacy-preserving system and method for verifying online reviews using payment network infrastructure to confirm that a reviewer is an actual paying customer. A review platform receives a review containing a token, a merchant and a date range and invokes a core verification API using an opaque review credential. The system employs a two-party pseudonymous identity bridging protocol that associates a one-way hashed platform identifier with a payment network token while ensuring that no entity has simultaneous access to both identities. The verification service then checks whether a transaction occurred between the token and the reviewed merchant within a defined period and generates a binary verification result, along with the merchant name and an approximate transaction date. The result is returned to the review platform to display a verified purchase badge and update a machine-readable merchant trust score accessible to AI agents. The process protects sensitive financial information and operates without requiring changes to the payment authorization network.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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