Dual Source Remittance Processing

Abstract

A method and apparatus for electronically processing bill payment requests where respective sets of payment requests are received electronically from a plurality of independent sources, each set of payment requests corresponding to an associated set of payors requesting payments to a plurality of payees. The payment requests are processed at a single remittance processing system having a database including payee information for each of the plurality of payees to generate payment directions for paying the plurality of payees in accordance with the processed payment requests.

Description

CROSS REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]The present application is a continuation of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 010,193, filed Jan. 21, 1998, and entitled DUAL SOURCE REMITTANCE PROCESSING, the contents of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Additionally, the present application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08 / 994,047, filed Dec. 19, 1997, and entitled AN ELECTRONIC BILL PAYMENT SYSTEM WITH MERCHANT IDENTIFICATION (now U.S. Pat. No. 7,296,004); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08 / 994,046, filed on Dec. 19, 1997, and entitled “AN ELECTRONIC BILL PAYMENT SYSTEM WITH ACCOUNT NUMBER SCHEMING” (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,577); and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08 / 994,363, filed on Dec. 19, 1997, and entitled “AN ELECTRONIC BILL PAYMENT SYSTEM WITH ACCOUNT RANGING” (now abandoned).TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present invention relates to electronic commerce. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved elect...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved technique for automatically paying bills to any merchant on behalf of consumers.

[0014]It is a further object of the present invention to provide a technique which allows individual bill payment entities to implement consolidated bill payment system with greater efficiency.

[0015]It is a further object of the present invention to provide a technique for correcting erroneous bill payment data received from customers. In particular, it is an object of the present invention to correctly identify a merchant record based on received information which may include erroneous data.

Problems solved by technology

However until recently it was not possible for a consumer, using a computer terminal, to interact with a single payment system capable of paying all the consumer's bills whether by electronic means or by a paper check.

Although the consolidated bill payment system described by Kight, et al. significantly advanced the state of the art, it did not focus on several problems which may arise in implementing a consolidated bill payment system capable of automatically paying consumer bills to merchants.

Developing and implementing a bill payment system has significant costs.

Ultimately, this means that each conventional bill payment system may have hundreds of thousands of merchants in a database.

This is an expensive and time consuming process.

Another problem is that consumers or data entry personnel sometimes make mistakes in entering payment data required by the bill payment system.

Such a case arises when a consumer's account number with a merchant is incorrectly entered.

It has been found that merchant information such as the merchant name, address, zip code are typically mangled at the data entry stage.

It has been further observed that errors will often be made upon entry of the zip code.

If this data is incorrect, the payment system may be unable to retrieve the correct merchant's record for processing a payment.

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