Alternative Payment Linking for ACH Incentives and Customer Recognition
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Solution Overview
Problem
Merchants face high payment processing fees for credit card transactions and lack the ability to associate customer ACH data with personally identifying information (PII) to offer incentives for ACH payments, limiting their ability to reduce costs and enhance customer loyalty.
Innovation Solution
Systems and methods for linking alternative payment information, such as ACH data, with online PII data by obtaining customer payment information, reading customer data from a database, and applying alternative payment information to a current purchase, using a processor-configured system to facilitate ACH transactions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If merchants accept payment card transactions, then customers enjoy convenient payment, but merchants face high processing fees
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the payment method parameter from payment card to ACH transfer, allowing merchants to select the payment type and view associated costs. This parameter change enables merchants to optimize their payment processing by choosing lower-cost ACH transfers when feasible, directly addressing the high fee problem while maintaining payment convenience through automated selection.
2Loss of energy
If merchants offer ACH payment incentives, then processing fees are reduced, but merchants cannot recognize customers or associate transactions with stored PII
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary data matching layer that connects ACH payment information with stored customer PII through common identifiers. This intermediary mechanism enables the system to recognize customers, retrieve their stored information, and associate transactions with their profiles, thereby maintaining customer recognition capability while enabling ACH payment processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-storing customer PII and payment information in databases before transactions occur. This preliminary data collection and organization enables the system to quickly match and recognize customers during actual transactions, eliminating the need for complex real-time identification while maintaining full customer recognition capability.
3Productivity
If merchants use traditional payment processing systems, then transactions are processed easily, but merchants cannot offer targeted incentives or enhance customer loyalty programs
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a universal payment processing platform that handles multiple payment types (payment cards, ACH transfers) and integrates with customer loyalty programs through a single unified architecture. This multi-functional system processes transactions efficiently while simultaneously enabling customer recognition, incentive application, and loyalty program enhancement, directly addressing the lack of adaptability in traditional systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for linking alternative payment information with online personally identifying information (PII) data includes obtaining customer payment information associated with a customer, reading customer data from a database based on the obtained customer payment information, obtaining alternative payment information from the read customer data, determining whether payment by the alternative payment information is enabled for the customer payment information, prompting the customer to enable payment by the alternative payment information, prompting the customer for authorization information associated with payment by the alternative payment information, enabling payment by the alternative payment information for the customer payment information, and applying the alternative payment information to a current purchase of the customer.