Monitoring and limiting requests to access system resources

A system comprising a processor, and a computer readable medium coupled to the processor, the computer readable medium comprising code for implementing a method of processing requests at a merchant service provider, the requests received from one or more merchant-side applications of a merchant, the method comprising:

• providing, by the merchant service provider, the merchant with an interface having one or more controls to permit the merchant to assign a request limit to at least one of the one or more merchant-side applications, the request limit being a limit on the number of requests the merchant service provider will process;
• counting, by the merchant service provider, incoming requests from the one or more merchant-side applications of the merchant;
• and
• generating, by the merchant service provider, an alert if a number of requests from at least one of the one or more merchant-side applications exceeds the request limit.

A computer-readable storage medium, comprising:

• program code for providing a merchant with an interface having one or more controls to permit the merchant to assign a request limit to at least one of one or more merchant-side applications, the request limit being a limit on the number of requests a merchant service provider will process;
• program code for counting incoming requests from the one or more merchant-side applications of the merchant;
• and
• program code for generating an alert if a number of requests from at least one of the one or more merchant-side applications exceeds the request limit.