NOT APPLICABLE
NOT APPLICABLE
NOT APPLICABLE
Millions of merchant transactions involving electronic records occur daily throughout the world. One common type of transaction involves the use of a presentation instrument, such as a credit card, a debit card, and the like. When such a presentation instrument is used to make a purchase, information stored on the card may be read by a point-of-sale device which creates an electronic record of the purchase. In the case of credit cards, the information read by the point-of-sale device along with the amount of the purchase is routed through various other entities in order to complete the purchase. For example, the transaction information may be electronically sent to a transaction processing entity, to the merchant's bank or financial institution, to a card holder association (such as VISA® or MasterCard®), and to the issuer's bank or financial institution.
Periodically, cardholders are billed and receive a statement from the card issuer for transactions. The advancement of information technology has expanded the available options for credit issuing organizations to send statements to cardholders, such as the electronic transmission of statements.
In some instances, a transaction processing entity prepares statements on behalf of a card issuer. However, because credit card terms (standard and promotional interest rates, credit limits, balance transfer terms, minimum payment requirements, etc.) can be complex and vary widely among cardholders, the issuer often will need to conduct at least a periodic preview or sampling of statements prepared by the processing entity before being transmitted to cardholders, to make sure the proper credit card terms are being used.
With electronic statements, previewing can be difficult. For example, statements are often transmitted to cardholders using encryption, security and delivery features. The handling of these features during previewing can add time and complexity to the process. Furthermore, because a large number of statements may be available for preview, the previewing system must be sufficiently flexible to permit the issuer to chose criteria and parameters for statements to be previewed, so that the previewing process does not present a large burden on the issuer or add unnecessary delay to the cardholder's receipt of the statement.
There is provided, in accordance with embodiments of the present invention, a system and method for previewing statements prepared by a transaction processing entity on behalf of a card issuer or other financial institution, where the statements are previewed by the financial institution prior to electronic transmission to a customer or cardholders
In one embodiment, a method includes providing a statement processing system, the statement processing system being operated by the transaction processing entity, preparing electronic statements at a statement processing system, providing a statement previewing system in communication with the statement processing system for the issuer to access the statements prior to being prepared with security (e.g., encryption) and delivery features, providing preview criteria to the previewing system, the criteria defining a group of statements that are to be previewed by the issuer, providing access to the group of statements for the issuer at the previewing system, providing correction data from the issuer to the previewing system if corrections to the group of statement are required, preparing corrected statements at the statement processing system if correction data has been provided to the previewing system, and electronically transmitting the group of statements to cardholders with the security and encryption features.
A more complete understanding of the present invention may be derived by referring to the detailed description of the invention and to the claims, when considered in connection with the Figures.
Credit services may be established with essentially any type of person, entity, organization, business, or the like that wishes to take payments for goods or services in the form of a credit. For convenience of discussion, such entities are generally referred to herein as “merchants.” Merchants may process a credit transaction based on an account identifier presented at the time of payment. The account identifier is used to identify the account to which the credit will eventually be posted. In many cases, the account identifier is provided on some type of presentation instrument, such as a credit card, debit card, smart card, stored value card, RFID (radio frequency identification) device, or the like. Conveniently, the account identifier may be read from a point-of-sale device, such as those described in copending U.S. application Ser. No. 10/116,689, entitled “SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PERFORMING TRANSACTIONS AT A POINT-OF-SALE,” filed Apr. 3, 2002, by Earney Stoutenburg, et al., the complete disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. However, the account identifier may be obtained in other ways, such as by visual inspection of the presentation instrument, by telephone, over the Internet, and the like.
The user account information is transmitted to a credit card or transaction processing service that approves and processes the transaction information and provides payment to the merchant. The transaction processing service includes at least one platform server that receives and processes the transaction information. One example of a credit card processing service is the service provided by First Data Corporation, Greenwood Village, Colo.
An entity providing processing services may do so not only for merchants, but also financial clients, such as banks and the like, that establish accounts and issue credit cards to their customers. These clients of the processing entity are hereinafter referred to for convenience as “issuers,” although it should be appreciated that depending on the circumstances, the client may be an organization or business other than a traditional “card issuer.”
Periodically, the processing entity produces statements on behalf of the issuer that summarize transactions for customers and bill the customers at least a minimum amount based upon their usage of the credit account. The statements must be presented to the customer so that the customer may render payment. In many cases, the financial statement is prepared by the credit card processing entity, and sent through the mail or electronically to the customer by the processing entity on behalf of the issuer. A more detailed description of the preparation and transmission of statements to cardholders can be found in co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 10/180,251, entitled “FINANCIAL STATEMENT PRESENTMENT SYSTEMS AND METHODS,” filed Jun. 25, 2003, by William Hickox, et al., the complete disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. The present invention provides systems and methods for enabling the issuer to preview such statements, i.e., review the statements prior to being sent to the cardholders
For further details on the network 100 as thus far described, reference can be made to the previously referenced application Ser. No. 10/180,251.
In accordance with some embodiments,
Having described the configuration of the network 100, the general operation of such network will now be described (more specific operations will be described later with reference to the remaining Figures).
Initially, financial transaction information is collected and stored using computers and storage devices associated with the host computer system 102. Periodically, the financial transactions are processed into statements for each customer or cardholder by the statement processing system 110. Cardholders may have various options relating to how to receive their financial statements (e.g., electronic, paper or both), although the described embodiments herein are directed to situations where such statements are transmitted electronically to cardholders.
At predetermined points in time (e.g., the end of billing cycles for respective cardholders), the server 104 directs the statement processing system 110 to prepare statements corresponding to those cardholders or their accounts, at which time the system collects and processes data (e.g., stored in database 106) for those accounts in order to prepare statements. The server 104 notifies the issuer computer 120 (e.g., via email) of the availability of such statements. At that time (or, if desired by the issuer, at a earlier point in time), the issuer provides selection criteria to the preview system 122, with parameters or criteria for those statements which the card issuer desires to select for preview. An employee of the card issuer at computer 120 accesses the statement preview system 122, which collects and transmits the group of selected statements for the issuer. The issuer then previews the selected statements.
After previewing and approval by the issuer, the server 104 causes an email to be transmitted to the cardholders at computers 114. As examples, the statement for each cardholder may be attached to the email, or the email may contain a link to a website operated by the processing entity in order for the cardholder to view his/her statement. In addition to receiving and viewing the electronic statement, the cardholder may chose a payment process through the same website for paying the amount owned, such as authorizing an electronic transfer of funds from a financial account of the cardholder to a financial account of the issuer.
Referring to
The server 104 then causes the statement processing system to send each statement file to the statement preview system 122 (step 212). While not seen in
Although not seen in
In addition to selecting sorting criteria for statements to be reviewed, the issuer may also designate the terms of previewing (step 217). The terms of previewing may provide different forms of conditional access to the statements. As an example, the issuer may specify that all statements to be previewed are approved by default if they are not flagged for correction within a specified period of time (e.g., one day) after available for preview. Alternatively, the issuer may specify that statements are to be automatically released to cardholders without previewing (e.g., for that one billing cycle only, or for more than one billing cycle), or that statements may only be released to cardholders after individually approved (and thus put on hold until such approval). Depending on the designations, step 217 can be either in addition to or in lieu of the issuer making section criteria at step 216.
At step 218, the statement processing system sorts statements according to the criteria provided at step 216, so they may be viewed by the issuer at computer 120. The card issuer selects statements that are in need of correction (step 222). In addition, the issuer may optionally specify that the corrected statement(s) are to be held (from release) until they have been re-run and approved (step 224), otherwise they are released and made available to the cardholder after the corrections are made. The statements are then corrected and re-run (step 226), and they are prepared by the statement processing system for release and distribution to cardholders (step 228). At step 232, the card processing entity applies the appropriate encryption and security measures to the statement (e.g., to prevent authorized access during transmission to the cardholder using standard encryption techniques such as symmetric or asymmetric encryption), and applies delivery features (e.g., an email is prepared to which the statement is an attachment, or an email is prepared with a link to a website where the statement may be accessed by the cardholder). The statements are then electronically transmitted (e.g., via email) or made available (e.g., via a website) to the cardholders (step 234).
The previewing of statements prior to the application of encryption/security/delivery features has the advantage of simplifying and speeding up the previewing process. For example, by previewing prior to encryption, the previewing system need not go through the step of decrypting statements prior to displaying to the issuer, and thus they may be provided more quickly to the previewing system 122.
While not illustrated in the drawings, an issuer may use a conditional access in the form of a hierarchical previewing and approval process. That is, when the statements are accessed at the card issuer computer 120, the employee viewing them may request corrections or approve, but the previewing system 122 may be programmed to hold the statements (without making requested corrections and without releasing to cardholders) until another person of higher authority also provides corrections or approvals. The previewing system 122 may also attach any comments of issuer employees to statements that have been previewed, so that each person in the hierarchy may comment on any previewed statement, with the comments displayed for the next, higher person in the hierarchy. A higher person in the hierarchy can thus see comments of subordinates before that person himself/herself requests corrections or approves the statement.
Also, if the system provides for multiple levels of approval, the system may provide that the employee viewing and approving any statements (a lower level employee) is not able to put a statement in a re-run status (step 226) without first being reviewed by a specified person that is higher in the hierarchy.
The process seen in
In addition, an employee of the issuer that is previewing a statement may enter comments at a box 430. Comments can be used for various purposes. As an example, a comment may point out particular aspects of a previewed statement that should be closely looked at by others because of questions or concerns, such as when there is a hierarchical previewing and approval process as described earlier, so that the questions or concerns will be seen by others subsequently previewing the statements.
While not illustrated in
While a detailed description of presently preferred embodiments of the invention has been given above, various alternatives, modifications, and equivalents will be apparent to those skilled in the art without varying from the spirit of the invention. For example, while embodiments have been illustrated in connection with statements for credit cardholders, it should be appreciated that the invention may also be used in connection with statements for other kinds of accounts, and for accounts where transactions may be made with presentation instruments or without presentation instruments. Therefore, the above description should not be taken as limiting the scope of the invention, which is defined by the appended claims.