Pricing Information System Using Transaction Data

The patent introduces a third-party intermediary system that collects pricing data from multiple merchants anonymously and presents aggregated price information to consumers. This intermediary acts as a mediator that enables price transparency without directly exposing individual merchants' pricing strategies to competitors, thus resolving the contradiction between maintaining competitive advantage and providing price transparency.

The system utilizes multi-functional credit card transaction data that already contains pricing, timing, and merchant information. By leveraging this existing universal data source that serves multiple purposes (billing, analytics, marketing), the system achieves accurate pricing information without requiring separate complex data collection infrastructure, thus resolving the contradiction between pricing accuracy and data collection complexity.

The patent segments the aggregation process into distinct functional modules: data collection from multiple merchants, anonymous identification of merchants, categorization of pricing data, and presentation to consumers. This segmentation allows each module to handle specific tasks independently, improving market competitiveness through comprehensive data aggregation while managing processing complexity through modular architecture.

The system applies local quality by providing different levels of information identification to different users. Individual merchants remain anonymously identified in the aggregated data to protect their competitive position, while the system simultaneously maintains the ability to identify and analyze specific merchant performance for internal business decisions. This differentiated identification approach preserves both competitive protection and data utility.