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US 2012/0123918 A1Published application
Determination of Interchange Categories
AssigneePE Systems
InventorsAlan Wayne McElroy, Thomas P. Parrish, Kelly Birr
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This document describes tools capable of auditing and/or determining reductions to card-issuer interchange fees charged for credit-card transactions. The tools may do so automatically and with user interaction for large amounts of transactions.
Claims20
One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-readable instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:
- receiving credit card transaction data from a database for credit card transactions associated with a particular merchant, the credit card transaction data indicating, for one or more credit card transactions an interchange category assigned by a card issuer;
- receiving published interchange-category parameters for the interchange category assigned, the published interchange-category parameters comprising at least one merchant-status parameter specific to a status of a merchant;
- receiving a parameter specific to a status of the particular merchant;
- and
- determining, automatically and without user interaction and for the one or more credit card transactions, whether the interchange category assigned is correct based on whether the merchant-status parameter matches the status of the particular merchant.
2 more elements
A computer-implemented method, comprising:
- building, automatically and without user interaction, a baseline card-issuer interchange rate for a particular merchant based on:
- card-issuer interchange fees associated with card-issuer interchange categories assigned to credit card transactions;
- and
- dollar volumes on which the card-issuer interchange fees are charged, the card-issuer interchange fees and dollar volumes being from multiple historic merchant-processor statements of the particular merchant and over a historical period;
- adjusting, automatically and without user interaction, the baseline card-issuer interchange rate for the particular merchant based on interchange rate changes made after the historical period to the card-issuer interchange categories assigned to credit card transactions of the particular merchant over the historical period, effective to provide an adjusted baseline card-issuer interchange rate;
- receiving, automatically and without user interaction, credit card transaction data for a current billing cycle for credit card transactions associated with the particular merchant, the credit card transaction data being used to determine card issuer interchange categories currently assigned to the credit card transactions during the current billing cycle;
- determining, automatically and without user interaction, a current card-issuer interchange rate for the current billing cycle based on the card issuer interchange categories assigned during the current billing cycle;
- determining, automatically and without user interaction, a rate difference between the card-issuer interchange rate for the current billing cycle and the adjusted baseline card-issuer interchange rate;
- determining, automatically and without user interaction, a fee savings or loss based on a credit card dollar volume for the credit card transactions during the current billing cycle and the determined rate difference;
- and
- providing an indication of the fee savings or loss to an entity associated with the particular merchant.
8 more elements
A computer-implemented method, comprising:
- receiving credit card transaction data associated with a particular merchant, the credit card transaction data including an indication of at least one credit card transaction assigned to an interchange category;
- determining whether the at least one credit card transaction was correctly assigned to the interchange category by comparing a status of the merchant with a merchant-status parameter used to assign the at least one credit card transaction assigned to the interchange category;
- and
- reporting an indication of whether the at least one credit card transaction was correctly assigned to the interchange category.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.