Incremental Payment Reconciliation via Plugin Normalization

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Reconciling financial transaction information from multiple sources across different currencies and locations is complex and resource-intensive, especially due to inaccuracies and varying formats from payment providers, leading to inefficient computing resource usage and storage requirements.

Innovation Solution

A system utilizing incremental processing to reconcile financial transactions by processing incremental changes against base settlement information, with a plugin model for onboarding additional payment providers and normalization to handle diverse data formats, and versioning for continuous data delivery.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If full dataset reconciliation is performed periodically, then data accuracy is improved, but computational resource consumption increases significantly

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvereconciliation accuracyVSAvoidcomputational resource consumption

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The patent divides the reconciliation process into incremental segments, processing only new transactions and changes since the last reconciliation rather than the entire dataset. This segmentation allows the system to maintain high accuracy while significantly reducing computational resource consumption by focusing only on relevant data portions.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system performs preliminary actions by maintaining transaction logs and change records between reconciliations. This preliminary tracking of data changes enables the incremental reconciliation to efficiently identify what needs to be processed, avoiding redundant computation on unchanged data while ensuring accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

2Adaptability or versatility

If multiple payment providers with different data formats are supported, then system versatility is improved, but device complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepayment provider compatibilityVSAvoiddata processing complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces an intermediary normalization layer that translates diverse payment provider data formats into a standardized internal representation. This intermediary component handles format variations, date formats, currency codes, and data structures, allowing the system to support multiple providers without increasing core processing complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements universal data structures and processing logic that can handle multiple payment provider formats through a common interface. The normalized transaction model and standardized reconciliation process serve multiple functions across different providers, reducing overall system complexity despite increased versatility.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

3Productivity

If incremental processing is implemented, then productivity is improved, but reliability may worsen due to potential data inconsistencies

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvereconciliation speedVSAvoiddata consistency

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The patent implements feedback mechanisms where the system continuously monitors and logs transaction states, reconciliation results, and data changes. This feedback loop ensures that incremental processing maintains data consistency by tracking the state of transactions and verifying reconciliation outcomes, allowing the system to recover from or detect inconsistencies.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Solution Approach 2:

The system performs preliminary validation and logging of transaction data before incremental processing. By pre-processing and recording transaction states, the system ensures that incremental updates start from a known consistent state, maintaining reliability while enabling faster processing of subsequent changes.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS10572936B2Commerce payment reconciliation system

Publication Date: 2020.02.25 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

Described herein are various technologies pertaining to reconciling financial transaction information. A system for reconciling financial transactions can utilize incremental processing. Normalized financial data can be processed with submitted financial data identifiable from data derived from submitted financial data. A pluggable framework can utilize payment provider specific configuration data, a plugin model that provides information regarding a syntactic structure of financial data, and a plugin reader that provides semantic information regarding financial data. A distributed computation platform can utilize distributed computational units to utilize dynamic programming to derive a balance for particular accounts. Results from the distributed computational units are reduced into a point-in-time report. A first data version and a second data version from a particular payment provider can be retrieved. These data versions can be simultaneously maintained and accessible by a data consumer. Changes between the versions can be identified and provided to the data consumer.