Method and apparatus for paying bills electronically using machine readable information from an invoice

A bill pay system wherein a consumer directs a consumer financial institution to pay a biller's bill electronically, comprising:

• a bill generator, controlled by the biller to generate a bill to the consumer, the bill including machine-readable data fields comprising at least a biller identifier field and a consumer-biller account number identifier, wherein a consumer-biller account number identified by the consumer-biller account number identifier is a number used to differentiate the consumer from the plurality of consumers of goods or services provided by the biller to those plurality of consumers;
• means for sending the bill to the consumer;
• data capture means, controlled by the consumer, for capturing the machine-readable data fields from the bill;
• validating means, coupled to the data capture means, for validating the captured data fields, wherein the validating means and the data capture means are configured to provide real-time response to the consumer if the validating means detects invalid data fields, the response being a prompt to recapture the machine-readable data fields;
• a consumer terminal, coupled to electronically receive the validated data fields, which generates a bill pay order and electronically transmits the bill pay order to an electronic bill payment network, wherein the bill pay order is directed to the biller by inclusion of the biller identification field in the bill pay order;
• and
• means, controlled by the biller, for crediting a payment amount of the bill pay order to an account indicated by the consumer-biller account number.