Electronic Funds Transfer

• US 20110082788A1
• Filed: 09/01/2010
• Published: 04/07/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Navaho Networks, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Navaho Networks, Inc.
• Inventors: Itwaru, Mark
• Application Number:
  US12/873,876
• Publication Number:
  US 20110082788A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/02 involving a neutral party, e.g. certification authority, notary or trusted third party [TTP]
• 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 20/14 specially adapted for billing systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/28 Pre-payment schemes, e.g. "pay before"
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

A consumer may make an electronic bill payment from his financial institution account to an intermediary for a certain amount. Data related to the bill payment transaction may be sent to a facilitation server associated with the intermediary. This data may be filtered to determine whether or not the data represents a valid bill payment transaction. If it does, an intermediate account provided by the intermediary, or an account of a third party (such as an on-line merchant) may be immediately credited with the amount of the bill payment so that the consumer can immediately use those funds in an on-line purchase.

Claims

1. A method, at a client computer of facilitating an electronic funds transfer, comprising:

requesting a bill payment transaction, over a public Internet, through a web page interfacing with a financial institution server associated with a first monetary account, to transfer funds from said first monetary account to a second monetary account;

receiving information relating to said bill payment transaction from said financial institution server, over said public Internet;

sending information relating to said bill payment transaction to a facilitation server associated with said second account, over said public Internet.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said web page interfacing with said financial institution server is downloaded from said financial institution server, over said public Internet.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said information relating to said bill payment transaction comprises a date and a deposit amount.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein said information relating to said bill payment comprises a confirmation number and an account number associated with said first account.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising displaying said web page interfacing with said financial institution server within a web page interfacing with said facilitation server.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising, prior to said requesting, downloading from said facilitation server an application for displaying a web page within a web page of said facilitation server.

7. A method, at a client computer, of facilitating an electronic funds transfer, comprising:

establishing an user interface;

receiving an indication of an on-line banking site of a financial institution from a facilitation server;

based on said indication, pointing a web browser for a window on a display to said on-line banking site;

on receiving a prompt from said user interface, capturing data displayed in said window and transmitting said data to said facilitation server.

8. A method, at a server, of facilitating an electronic funds transfer, comprising:

on request from a client computer, sending an indication of an on-line banking site of a financial institution to said client;

receiving data from said client;

filtering said data;

based on said filtering, selectively crediting an account with a deposit amount or sending confirmation of an amount and a payee to a pre-selected destination.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said data received from said client computer is a string and further comprising parsing said string into fields before said filtering.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein said fields include a deposit amount field.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said filtering comprises determining whether data in said deposit amount field represents a deposit amount that is less than a pre-determined maximum amount.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein said filtering comprises determining if said data received is data from said financial institution indicated by said indication.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein said fields include a payee field and wherein said filtering comprises comparing data in said payee field with a pre-determined payee indication.

14. A method, at a server, of facilitating an electronic funds transfer, comprising:

receiving confirmation data originating from a financial institution relating to a bill payment made from a monetary account at said financial institution, said confirmation data identifying a payer, a payee and an amount;

filtering said data against filter criteria;

based on said filtering, selectively crediting an account with said amount or sending confirmation of said amount and said payer to a pre-selected destination.