US 6,049,786 A · Electronic bill presentment and payment system which deters cheating by employing hashes and digital signatures

Abstract

An electronic bill presentment and payment system includes multiple biller computers, a bill presentment computer, and multiple customer computers. Each biller computer stores complete bills for the customer of a corresponding biller, and the bill presentment computer stores a respective summary of each complete bill along with a hash of that complete bill which is digitally signed by the biller computer. Each particular customer computer makes a payment on a selected complete bill by generating a payment message which includes a) the hash of the selected complete bill digitally signed by the biller computer, and b) an authorization to pay a specified amount of funds on the selected complete bill, both of which are digitally signed by that particular customer computer. This payment message is stored in a closing record for use in resolving issues regarding whether or not the bill was changed after payment was authorized, and whether or not an alleged payment on the selected bill was authorized.

Claims15

Dependent claims

An electronic bill processing system for efficiently presenting and verifying bills, which is comprised of:

multiple biller computers, each biller computer having a data base which stores a respective plurality of complete bills for a plurality of customers;
a bill presentment computer, coupled to and distinct from all of said biller computers, having a data base which stores a summary of each complete bill in which superfluous data is extracted and a respective hash of each complete bill which is digitally signed by the corresponding biller computer, where each summary and hash are at least twenty times smaller than the corresponding complete bill;
and,
multiple customer computers, coupled to said biller computers and said bill presentment computer, wherein each particular customer computer includes a control means which requests and receives from said bill presentment computer, a summary of a selected complete bill plus its respective digitally signed hash, and as an option, requests and receives from said biller computer, said selected complete bill.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Electronic bill presentment and payment system which deters cheating by employing hashes and digital signatures

Life of this patent

Electronic bill presentment and payment system which deters cheating by employing hashes and digital signatures

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims15