Electronic bill presentment and payment system that obtains user bill information from biller web sites

• US 7,370,014 B1
• Filed: 11/01/2001
• Issued: 05/06/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fidelity Information Services, LLC (Fidelity National Information Services Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Metavante Corporation (Fidelity National Information Services Incorporated)
• Inventors: Jamison, Eric, Vasavada, Dhaval, Kosowski, Alex
• Primary Examiner(s): Bashore; Alain L.
• Application Number:
  US09/999,311
• Time in Patent Office: 2,378 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1, 705/35, 705/39, 705/40, 235/275
• US Class Current: 705/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/04 Payment circuits
• 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 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

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.

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.

2. The method set forth in claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

receiving electronic items of bill data from a biller over a network; and

allowing the user to perform operations on items of bill data including at least indicating payment of a bill that corresponds to an item of bill data.

3. The method set forth in claim 1, further comprises the step of:

using the statement date to schedule the step of using the received user access information to access the biller website.

4. The method set forth in claim 1, further comprising the step of:

determining validity of the provided additional item of bill data, wherein the step of incorporating the provided additional item of bill data into the items of bill data is initiated when the provided additional item of bill data is determined valid.

5. The method set forth in claim 1,

further comprising the steps of:

determining whether a Web page provided by the biller website is different from a Web page previously provided by the biller website; and

modifying the manner in which the additional bill data is scraped to read the different Web page of the biller website.

6. The method set forth in claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

receiving items of bill data from a biller in ways other than from a biller website;

determining whether the provided item of bill data duplicates an item of bill data is already contained in the items of bill data; and

maintaining a single copy of the duplicate item of bill data in the items of bill data.

7. The method set forth in claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

maintaining user bill display data associated with the item of bill data, the user bill display data being used to display the individual bill corresponding to the item of bill data to the user;

maintaining biller bill display data associated with the additional item of bill data;

using the received user access information to periodically access the biller website to further provides the biller bill display data associated with the provided additional item of bill data; and

incorporating the biller bill display data into the maintained user bill display data.

8. The method set forth in claim 7, further comprising the step of:

modifying the biller bill display data to make user bill display data thereof.

9. The method set forth in claim 8, wherein the step of modifying includes the step of removing an interactive element from the biller display data.

10. The method set forth in claim 8, wherein

the step of modifying includes the step of replacing a reference in the biller display data to information external thereto in the biller website.

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.

12. The EBPP system set forth in claim 11, wherein

said scheduling component reads the billing date from the scraped bill data to calculate a billing interval and to schedule a next scrape date for said bill bot using said billing interval.

13. The system set forth in claim 11, wherein said scheduling component allows the user to schedule the bill bot'"'"'s access of the biller website.

14. The system set forth in claim 13, wherein

the additional item of bill data includes a statement date;

and

said scheduling component uses the statement date to schedule the bill bot'"'"'s access of the biller website.

15. The system set forth in claim 11, wherein

the bill bot determines validity of the additional item of bill data and does not provide an invalid additional item of data.

16. The system set forth in claim 11, wherein

the bill information database receives items of bill data from a biller in ways other than from a biller website;

and

the bill bot provides the additional item of bill data only when the bill bot has determined that the additional item of bill data does not duplicate an item of bill data that is already contained in the items of bill data.

17. The system set forth in claim 11, wherein:

said bill information database maintains user bill display data associated with the item of bill data, the bill display data being used to display the individual bill corresponding to the item of bill data to the user;

the biller website further maintains biller bill display data associated with the additional item of bill data; and

the bill bot further provides the biller bill display data associated with the received additional item of bill data, the bill information database incorporating the provided biller bill display data into the bill display data.

18. The system set forth in claim 17, wherein

the bill bot further modifies the biller display data to make user bill display data thereof.

19. The system set forth in claim 18, wherein

the bill bot modifies the biller display data to remove an interactive element therefrom.

20. The system set forth in claim 18, wherein

the bill bot modifies the biller display data by replacing a reference in the biller display data to information external thereto in the biller website.

21. The system set forth in claim 18, wherein

the bill bot modifies the biller display data by adding an identification of the biller thereto.