Funds Transfer Method and Apparatus

Abstract

A withdrawal of assets is initiated from a first account at a first financial institution. A deposit of the assets withdrawn from the first account is initiated to a second account at a second financial institution. The first account and the second account have a common account holder. The withdrawal and deposit of assets may be initiated after analyzing multiple accounts of the account holder and determining whether an adjustment of funds among the multiple accounts would benefit the account holder. A debit instruction is used to initiate the withdrawal of assets and a credit instruction is used to initiate the deposit of the withdrawn assets. The withdrawal and deposit of assets can be implemented using one or more payment networks, debit networks, or a wire transfer between the two financial institutions.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to the handling of financial transactions and, more particularly, to the transfer of funds between accounts at different financial institutions.BACKGROUND[0002]Customers of financial institutions (both individual customers and businesses) typically maintain multiple financial accounts at one or more financial institutions. Financial institutions include, for example, banks, savings and loans, credit unions, mortgage companies, lending companies, and stock brokers. A customer's financial accounts may include asset accounts (such as savings accounts, checking accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs), mutual funds, bonds, and equities) and debt accounts (such as credit card accounts, mortgage accounts, home equity loans, overdraft protection, and other types of loans).[0003]In many situations, a user's asset accounts may not be earning the best available interest rate or the user's debt accounts my not be at the most competitive interes...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012]In one embodiment, multiple financial accounts are registered at a single point, thereby allowing the transfer of funds between any pair of registered accounts.

Problems solved by technology

In many situations, a user's asset accounts may not be earning the best available interest rate or the user's debt accounts my not be at the most competitive interest rate.

However, typical online banking services do not permit the transfer of funds between two different financial institutions.

Thus, if a user wants to transfer funds, for example, from a checking account at a bank to a money market account at a stock broker, the user cannot generally execute the transfer using online banking.

A bank wire provides a faster method of transferring funds between financial institutions, but is not generally cost-effective for small transfers (e.g., transfers of less than a few thousand dollars), due to the costs associated with the bank wire.

For small transfers, the costs associated with the bank wire may exceed the interest savings generated by the transfer.

This is tedious and requires the user to remember the differences between the online interfaces at the different financial institutions.

This is tedious and requires the user to remember the differences between the online interfaces at the different financial institutions.

Thus, the systems and procedures available today do not provide a convenient mechanism for transferring funds between accounts at different financial institutions.

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