Electronic bill presentment and payment system that obtains user bill information from biller web sites
First Claim
1. A method for aggregating bills from a biller website via the Internet to provide items of bill data to a user and to facilitate payments of the items of bill data for the user, the method comprising the steps of:
- configuring a bot to operate as an agent for the user, said bot accessing said biller website and gathering bill data for said user;
providing an interface for the user to enter user access information required to access said biller website;
receiving said user access information from the user;
validating said user access information at said biller website by logging in at said biller website;
notifying the user if the validation of said user access information fails;
accessing said biller website with said bot using said user access information to scrape user bill data from said biller website;
using said user access information to access the biller website at scheduled times to provide an additional item of bill data for the user, wherein the additional item of bill data includes a statement date;
incorporating the additional item of bill data into the items of bill data; and
providing an interface for the user to enter bill payment information necessary to pay a bill.
6 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An electronic bill presentation and payment (EBPP) system that is able to obtain bills for its customers from scrape-enabled biller Web sites. The EBPP system has an interface which permits a customer to specify that the customer wishes the EBPP system to retrieve a customer'"'"'s bills from a biller Web site at which the customer may access them. The customer provides his or her access information for the biller Web site to the EBPP system, which then uses a software agent to make scheduled scrapes of the biller Web site to obtain the customer'"'"'s bill. The software agent scrapes not only bill summary information such as the account number, the statement date, the bill amount, the payment due date, the minimum amount and/or total amount due from the biller Web site, but also scrapes display information for the bill. The display information is the HTML that the biller Web site itself uses to display the bill. The agent cleans the HTML so that it can be displayed in the environment provided by the EBPP system. Both the bill summary information and the display information are incorporated into databases maintained by the EBPP system, which treats bills obtained from scrape-enabled Web sites in the same fashion as bills obtained from other sources.
-
Citations
21 Claims
-
1. A method for aggregating bills from a biller website via the Internet to provide items of bill data to a user and to facilitate payments of the items of bill data for the user, the method comprising the steps of:
-
configuring a bot to operate as an agent for the user, said bot accessing said biller website and gathering bill data for said user; providing an interface for the user to enter user access information required to access said biller website; receiving said user access information from the user; validating said user access information at said biller website by logging in at said biller website; notifying the user if the validation of said user access information fails; accessing said biller website with said bot using said user access information to scrape user bill data from said biller website; using said user access information to access the biller website at scheduled times to provide an additional item of bill data for the user, wherein the additional item of bill data includes a statement date; incorporating the additional item of bill data into the items of bill data; and providing an interface for the user to enter bill payment information necessary to pay a bill. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
-
-
11. An electronic bill presentment and payment system, the system comprising:
-
a user interface for enabling a user to enter user financial account information and user access information for use in accessing a biller website for scraping bill data at said biller website; a bill information database that contains the user'"'"'s items of bill data and user access information for the user that is accessible to the user; a bill bot using the user access information to access the biller website at scheduled times to provide an additional item of bill data for the user, said bill bot scraping said biller website to obtain bill data for said user, said bill bot returning said user bill data from said biller website to said bill information database; a bill center having an interface for allowing the user to view which bills need to be paid and to select bills for payment, said bill center using said user financial account information to initiate payment on behalf of the user; and a scheduling component enabling the user to schedule a payment initiation date, said scheduling component allowing the user to define payment rules. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
-
Specification