Order system payment routing

• US 20070282741A1
• Filed: 09/07/2006
• Published: 12/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kumar, Vinod, Samsi, Caesar M.
• Granted Patent: US 7,630,936 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/10 specially adapted for electronic funds transfer [EFT] systems; specially adapted for home banking systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/102 Bill distribution or payments
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/105 involving programming of a portable memory device, e.g. IC cards, "electronic purses"
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to processing payment requests. In aspects, a user of an online system is allowed to pay for goods or services using a combination or one or more payment types including credit card, cash card, gift certificate, purchase order, money order, other payment types, and the like. A payment router determines which payment processor(s) needs to be involved to satisfy each payment request and routes payment requests to each payment processor as needed. Adding new payment methods and changing existing payment methods may be accomplished by changing a table or the like that associates payment methods with payment processors.

Claims

9. In a computing environment, an apparatus, comprising:

an order creation component arranged to receive order-related input from a client and to store data derived from the order-related input, wherein the order-related input indicates a plurality of payment methods to use to pay for a purchase;

a configuration database arranged to store associations between payment methods and payment processors; and

a payment router arranged to read the data, to determine a first payment processor to which to forward a first payment request for a first of the payment methods, to determine a second payment processor to which to forward a second payment request for a second of the payment methods, wherein the payment router is arranged to determine the first and second payment processors using the data and associations stored in the configuration database.

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform actions, comprising:

receiving input regarding a set of one or more goods to purchase in a single purchase transaction;

receiving input regarding a plurality of payment methods by which the set of one or more goods are to be purchased;

creating an object for each payment method, wherein each object indicates an amount to pay using the payment method for which the object was created;

determining a payment processor for each of the objects; and

forwarding each object to a determined payment processor for paying the amount indicated by the object.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the pluarality of payment methods comprise one or more of a credit card, a cash card, a gift certificate, a purchase order, a money order, and a proprietary payment method.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the plurality of payment methods comprise at least two credit cards.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein determining a payment processor for each of the objects comprises accessing a database that associated payment methods with payment processors.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 4, wherein the database includes a field that stores a type identifier, wherein each payment method is associated with a type identifier.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein related payment methods are associated with the same type identifier.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein forwarding each object to a determined payment processor for paying the amount indicated by the object comprises executing a pipeline for each object and providing the object for which the piple was executed to the pipeline.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more goods comprises one or more goods and/or one or more services.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the data is stored in a collection of objects, with each object corresponding to one of the payment methods.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the objects are defined by an extensible object model that allows inheritance.

12. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the payment router executes in a backwards-compatibility mode that allows weakly-typed objects to maintain compatibility with applications that do not define the objects based on a object model.

12-1. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the configuration database is further arranged to store identifiers that identify a type of each payment method stored in the configuration database.

14. A method implemented at least in part by a computer, the method comprising:

creating a first association of a first payment method with a first payment processor;

creating a second association of a second payment method with a second payment processor;

storing the first and second associations in a database; and

in response to requests from a component processing payments, retrieving the first and second associations, wherein the component is capable of receiving an indication of multiple payment methods to pay for a single purchase.

15. the method of claim 14, further comprising changing the first payment processor while maintaining the association between the first payment method and the first payment processor as changed.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising creating a third association of a third payment method with a third payment processor and storing the third association in the database.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising deleting the second association from the database.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein a type of the first payment method comprises a credit card, a cash card, a gift certificate, a purchase order, or a money order.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein a type of the second payment method is different than the type of the first payment method.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the type of the first payment method is identical to a type of the second payment method.