ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,277,543, issued on April 15, was assigned to Capital One Services LLC (McLean, Va.).

"Tone verification of a physical card" was invented by Galen Rafferty (Mahomet, Ill.), Samuel Sharpe (Cambridge, Mass.) and Austin Walters (Savoy, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In some implementations, a card for communicating with a front-end device may include a substrate and an audio generator at least partially embedded in the substrate and configured to generate audio waves. Additionally, the card may include a contact at least partially embedded in the substrate and configured to activate the audio generator and circuitry configured to process...