Apple has patented a mobile ad targeting system that could deliver advertising based on the users credit card balance, to only show items they can currently afford.

Patent 14/667472, granted by the US Patent & Trademark Office on 16 July, describes a system to “analyse the users available credit in order to assess the likelihood of a user being able to purchase advertised goods and/or services. The available credit may be provided by the billing system, i.e., from the users account maintained by the billing system, or from a credit extending system or facility, from the users account provided by the credit extending facility.”

Advertisers could choose to show ads only to people who are deemed able to afford the product, or use an algorithm to decide which from a selection of differently-priced items would be best promoted to a user.

The concept seems to contradict Apples current stance on advertising. Last month, CEO Tim Cook criticised rivals like Google and Facebook for “gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it. We think thats wrong. And its not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

The patent was apparently filed in March this year. However, it is a continuation of a 2008 filing and, with references to WAP sites, PDAs and text-to-win campaigns as the bread and butter of mobile marketing, the patent certainly reads more like a relic of that era.