Smart payment instrument selection
First Claim
1. A method for automatically selecting a payment instrument, comprising the steps of:
- notifying a merchant application of a desire to make a purchase transaction for an offered product or service;
said merchant application sending information comprising information of said purchase transaction to a corresponding smart wallet application, said smart wallet application having stored discount information and information about one or more payment instruments;
said smart wallet application processing said purchase transaction information and said discount information and suggesting at least one payment instrument from said one or more payment instruments; and
selecting a payment instrument from said suggested at least one payment instrument.
11 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method and apparatus is provided for constructing and using a smart wallet, i.e. a repository of payment instruments, such as, for example, credit cards, with automatic selection when making a purchase in an online environment. In one embodiment of the invention, the wallet service first finds the intersection of acceptable instruments between a merchant and a user. For example, the invention matches a list of user held credit cards against a list of acceptable credit cards at a merchant. The wallet service then intelligently selects, or at least ranks in order, the payment instruments based on value to the customer. The ranking can take into account: a) cash back rates; b) mileage rates for the specific potential purchase; and c) temporal discounts such as shipping or coupon discounts for the specific product type; etc. The act of automatically making a selection of a payment instrument, such as a credit card, in an online environment is analogous to what a human does when buying things at a store. The advantage is that an automatic system can integrate all the discount notices and coupons that are typically mailed to a cardholder. The system preferably presumes that a smart wallet is given information about a transaction, and has collected information about the payment instruments.
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Citations
34 Claims
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1. A method for automatically selecting a payment instrument, comprising the steps of:
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notifying a merchant application of a desire to make a purchase transaction for an offered product or service;
said merchant application sending information comprising information of said purchase transaction to a corresponding smart wallet application, said smart wallet application having stored discount information and information about one or more payment instruments;
said smart wallet application processing said purchase transaction information and said discount information and suggesting at least one payment instrument from said one or more payment instruments; and
selecting a payment instrument from said suggested at least one payment instrument. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. An apparatus for automatically selecting a payment instrument, comprising:
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means for notifying a merchant application of a desire to make a purchase transaction for an offered product or service;
means for said merchant application sending information comprising information of said purchase transaction to a corresponding smart wallet application, said smart wallet application having stored discount information and information about one or more payment instruments;
means for said smart wallet application processing said purchase transaction information and said discount information and suggesting at least one payment instrument from said one or more payment instruments; and
means for selecting a payment instrument from said suggested at least one payment instrument. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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Specification