SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES FOR ABSTRACTION OF ECONOMIES OF SCALE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

A system and method facilitating financing for small businesses, including the use of fractional reserve banking, optimizing the reserve required for the financing system based on costs including inventory, payroll, rent, and other bills, billing and payment processing, optimization of timing for supply purchases based on inventory and delivery time for applicable businesses, support for payment plans, business and individual-specific lines of credit, restaurant and employee credit ratings, expense tracking, and optical recognition of scanned bills for scanning bills into a business's account or splitting the bill between parties on the platform.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Art

The disclosure relates to the field of financial services, more specifically the field of aggregation of financial services to enable economies of scale for small businesses,

Discussion of the State of the Art

An economy of scale is a useful concept in business, and reflects an all-too-true reality, in which a large-scale manufacturer or seller of some sort may experience lower cost-per-item than a smaller business, because of the advantages of having large infrastructure and being able to produce, sell, or otherwise market large quantities of items at a time, driving the cost-per-item down for large merchants, such as AMAZON™, WALMART™, or APPLE™. Any single person or local business has trouble competing with these companies at their own game, whether it is selling a variety of goods in a brick-and-mortar store, selling books specifically, or making and selling phones (which is almost entirely impossible for a small-scale operation to even achieve to begin with). But there are further benefits besides manufacture and sale of goods, for economies of scale, that aid large businesses but do not aid smaller ones.

Delivery infrastructure and centralization of logistics and finance are some of the biggest economy-of-scale boons for large, national or multinational corporations, to the point where some companies even have their own delivery services exclusively. A local store does not have these benefits typically, and might have to self-manage their deliveries—if any—through a normal postal system at greater inconvenience to themselves and their customer, and sometimes greater cost. The finances, bill payments, payroll, and more, are also often not easily centralized or automated for many smaller businesses.

Further, a business and employee-level rating of credit-worthiness to issue business lines of credit and business credit cards, for small businesses, integrated with a bill and payroll payment system and bill management system, does not exist in an efficient or commonly used context in the market. Many economy-of-scale services of this nature are not provided to smaller businesses because of the nature of economies of scale, in which more favorable financial realities are available to larger corporations.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the inventor has conceived and reduced to practice, in a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system and methods for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses. The following non-limiting summary of the invention is provided for clarity, and should be construed consistently with embodiments described in the detailed description below.

A system has been devised for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, comprising: a financing system application server comprising at least a processor, a memory, and a first plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operating on the processor, wherein the programming instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the processor to: accept connections over a network from users; register users as business personnel with proper documentation; allow users to register the business they operate within as a business entity in the application server; acquire information about business and all key personnel, if any, through the registered user; determine creditworthiness of business entity and any key personnel; deliver loan agreements and associated funds for specified uses to registered business entity; wherein the loan funds may be utilized for business costs including delivery and shipment of goods, payroll, corporate expenses, and utility bills associated with the business entity; allow a business entity to deposit funds manually or automatically through scheduled payments; utilize fractional reserve banking techniques to use deposited funds to finance other businesses or operations associated with the application server; wherein the fractional reserve banking techniques are optimized based on the business entity's expected and historical costs and timing of withdrawals and payments; develop an individual credit worthiness rating for each business entity and key person associated with the business entity; wherein the individual credit worthiness ratings are used to allow for credit to be issued to each business entity and key person with rates and maximums individual to the business entity and key person in question; detect and recognize characters optically in a scanned bill for the purpose of digital financing of bills; interface with third party entities including at least third party delivery companies on behalf of the registered business entity; facilitate payment for services including to third party entities on behalf of the registered business entity; and detect fraudulent bill recognition attempts and fraudulent transactions on the part of either or both of a business entity or a key person or multiple key personnel.

A method has been devised for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, comprising the steps of: accepting connections over a network from users, using a financing system application server; registering users as business personnel with proper documentation, using a financing system application server; allowing users to register the business they operate within as a business entity in the application server, using a financing system application server; acquiring information about business and all key personnel, if any, through the registered user, using a financing system application server; determining creditworthiness of business entity and any key personnel, using a financing system application server; delivering loan agreements and associated funds for specified uses to registered business entity, using a financing system application server; wherein the loan funds may be utilized for business costs including delivery and shipment of goods, payroll, corporate expenses, and utility bills associated with the business entity, using a financing system application server; allowing a business entity to deposit funds manually or automatically through scheduled payments, using a financing system application server; utilizing fractional reserve banking techniques to use deposited funds to finance other businesses or operations associated with the application server, using a financing system application server; wherein the fractional reserve banking techniques are optimized based on the business entity's expected and historical costs and timing of withdrawals and payments, using a financing system application server; developing an individual credit worthiness rating for each business entity and key person associated with the business entity, using a financing system application server; wherein the individual credit worthiness ratings are used to allow for credit to be issued to each business entity and key person with rates and maximums individual to the business entity and key person in question, using a financing system application server; detecting and recognize characters optically in a scanned bill for the purpose of digital financing of bills, using a financing system application server; interfacing with third party entities including at least third party delivery companies on behalf of the registered business entity, using a financing system application server; facilitating payment for services including to third party entities on behalf of the registered business entity, using a financing system application server; and detecting fraudulent bill recognition attempts and fraudulent transactions on the part of either or both of a business entity or a key person or multiple key personnel, using a financing system application server.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, a system and method for . . .

Conceptual Architecture

FIG. 1is a diagram of an exemplary system for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, according to an aspect. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network140by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computers121and business-side mobile device122, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer121refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server130exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore133to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore133may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server130, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network140, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls.

FIG. 2is a diagram of an exemplary application used in a system for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, according to an aspect. A financing application132exists which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore133to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. Software components that comprise the operation of the financing application132include an integration engine201, a fraud detection service202, an optical character recognition engine203, an employee rating engine204, a restaurant evaluation engine205, an order timing optimization engine206, and a payment processor207. An integration engine serves as a go-between to manage the communications and inter-operability between the various engines, services, and interfaces that make up the financial application132, and may be thought of as the main “driver” of the application as a whole. A fraud detection service202may communicate with regulatory agencies and/or financial institutions for a given account or individual associated with an account on the application, to determine if questionable or dubious account transactions take place, such as transactions that take place from two distant locations within a very short period of time, or purchases made for non-business-related items, which may be specified by the account holder in their personal settings regarding fraud detection. An optical character recognition engine203is a piece of software that may receive as input an image or PDF, and recognize characters such as English letters from optical recognition, a common technology in the art. Such optical character recognition may be used to scan bills and invoices into the application for many purposes including splitting a bill between registered parties, storing digital records of received bills, and more. An employee and restaurant evaluation or rating engine204,205are both software components that may use credit reporting information received from a credit reporting agency or similar, along with application-specific knowledge of an individual's or business' operations and habits and actions with the financial application, to determine how much credit may be safely lent to them, in a manner similar to credit rating agencies. The difference here is that the fine-tuning of how the parameters of an individual or business are calculated and weighed may be different from other credit agencies, and may be altered on an as-needed basis for individual businesses or personnel in businesses, and may be used to issue lines of credit or individual credit cards to such businesses or personnel that have specific terms and limits attached that are designed for those individuals or businesses specifically, rather than being tied to a “type” or “rank” or “level” of card or credit worthiness for all businesses and individuals of that “level.” An order timing optimization engine206may be used to calculate, based on stored data in a datastore133, the time it will take for a given order to be received by the business, including the travel delay from the supplier or deliverer as well as the time before the order is actually needed, to ensure the order is received when needed. A payment processor207is a software service that interfaces with any financial institution or institutions preferred and specified by the business to withdraw or deposit funds as necessary, for various operations of the application, as approved by the business. The payment processor may also handle payments from the business or the business' credit with the application to other services such as delivery services for stock replenishment, depending on the authorization for such services from the business.

FIG. 3is a method diagram of an exemplary system for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention. First a business-side device is used to register account for application via web interface310, which may be accomplished either through an application on the business-side device such as a mobile application or a desktop application, or may be accomplished on a website with a web browser such as OPERA™, SAFARI™, GOOGLE CHROME™, MICROSOFT EDGE™, or others. Registration may comprise at least a user to provide information on their identity and their business' identity, login credentials, afterwards a user may specify further account settings, including access to relevant financial accounts and credit data320, third-party web services if applicable330such as, for instance, a bank account number and routing number, or PAYPAL™ credentials to allow for deposits and withdrawals for paying bills and debts depending on the financial settings specified by the business account administrator. Other third party services that may be interfaced with may include delivery services and wholesalers, for automated re-purchasing of goods on a schedule or parsing of emails sent from delivery services to provide for accurate delivery updates within the application. A financing application may examine credit reports of business and any key personnel also registered, based on identity information provided, and examine specified business financials separately to develop separate credit worthiness report based in part on real-time operations and detailed knowledge of business and personnel340, as the application is used. For instance, if a business is always on-time paying off debts to the institution operating the financial application, and is responsible with their credit, this may reflect favorably on them, but if their business does not perform more than $1,000,000 worth of revenue annually, it might be determined that they should not be permitted to have an amount of credit beyond a certain point, such as $100,000 or some other number. A business may apply for lines of credit or loans of varying kinds from the financing application350, which may be separate from lines of credit or credit cards received or issues from other financial institutions, and may be used for short-term lending such as paying for supplies to replenish the business' stores if they don't have the funds immediately on hand for the purchase. The business is either accepted or denied for requested credit or loans360, but if accepted for credit and/or loans, the business may withdraw funds from them and use them manually or schedule them for use with interfaced third-party services, with business being able to make deposits to application370. Payment plans may be utilized and structured independently for each business or person, in a way that allows for different businesses to have different payment schedules or pay-off times, as the case may be. The business may also extend its credit from the financial application to business personnel in the form of credit cards for business-related uses such as travel costs or supplies for the operation of the business or the personnel in their capacity as employees of the business, and schedule automatic payments from their account, either with credit or debit from deposited funds380, which is done with a payment processor in the application used. For example, a business may schedule a monthly payment on the 5thof each month of $5,000 to go to a bank to pay off a loan for the purchase of an office space, until some future month, such as January of the year 2023, when the last payment will be made. The payments will then be handled from the financial application and the payments to the specified bank will be made against the business' credit or debit depending on if they have a positive account balance and an approved credit line or not, and therefore the application may, through the use of this function to pay multiple different regular bills, become a centralized location to pay bills, invoices, debts, and more, while paying only one provider.

FIG. 4is a method diagram illustrating the system being used to order wares (i.e. supplies for a restaurant), optimize the timing from the perspective of inventory numbers and estimated delivery time, handle the money for such transactions as a business line of credit, and communicate with the third party to complete the order. A business account is first registered and may set up automated ordering of wares via integration with third-party delivery services or supplier companies410, which may be accomplished with specialized integration software on the side of the third-party service such as an API that may be called automatically to order wares when provided with proper credentials and financing details. If third party software connected to the business account includes inventory management software or similar, it may be interfaced with via at least parsing text and datastore entries of inventory data by the financing application, so that the financing application may poll inventory numbers on a schedule determined by the account settings, if desired420. If a delivery service's delivery times (such as “5-10 business days to reach you”) are not available from the delivery service itself or from the financial application's datastore, delivery times are first acquired by calculating the time from a delivery order placement to arrival, and stored in the application datastore430, so that such data can be used in the future to estimate the optimal timing for delivery orders to be placed based on inventory item expected usage. Such inventory usage expectations may be based on manually input data or extrapolated data from inventory management software polls if inventory software is integrated with the financial application, and when combined with the delivery time delta (time between order placement and arrival), inventory replenishment orders may be placed in such a way as to arrive when needed440. For instance, if inventory usage data shows that an item is decreasing by an average of 5 items every business day, and there are only 50 more items in stock, and a delivery shipment from the supplier takes 5 to 10 business days to arrive, a new order may be placed now, so that it arrives when the inventory is approximately depleted, or sooner. Delivery order funds are then transferred from the financing application's connected funds, as a line of credit that may already be paid off or may be paid off over time by a business account, or may be paid directly by the business' funds if no credit is available or desired450. In this way, the application may be used as a fund holder if credit is not used, desired, or approved, but otherwise may be used as a centralized source of credit to play orders and manage inventory for the business, rather than having multiple institutions or websites or applications to go through for credit management, fund management, payment plans, and ordering shipments. If communications such as receipts or delivery date confirmations are sent to the application, for instance via email, from the delivery organization, the financing application may update the status of the order for business officials to see with the front-end interface, or communications may be manually handled by account administrators460

FIG. 5is a method diagram illustrating a financial application evaluating credit worthiness of businesses, employees, issuing and utilizing credit cards based on evaluations of individuals and businesses. After a business account is registered with a financial application, business financials and operating information are input by the account administrator or administrators, along with key personnel financial information and credit score information510. For instance, social security numbers of the key personnel listed in and/or managing the account, tax ID for the business, the names of the personnel, and such. Business ops information including revenue, operating income, outstanding loans, and even possibly a breakdown of profit by segment of the business, may be input for increased likelihood of being approved for credit from the financial application, at which point the business and/or key personnel in the business may apply for lines of credit or credit cards520, when they feel they have input all the information they need to and wish to. Individual personnel and businesses may also be evaluated separately for individualized credit cards and credit lines dependent on their credit worthiness, rather than having templates for “levels” or “tiers” of credit cards which are common in many lending organizations530, allowing for individualized treatment and evaluation for lending.

FIG. 6is a method diagram illustrating a financial application tracking corporate expenses, scheduling payments for bills and other regular payments through the application as a creditor, and using Optical Character Recognition (“OCR”) to scan photographs of bills or invoices. A business account may enter regular expenses and the period of the expense—i.e. $500 every month, $2,400 every 12 months starting in December, etc.610, which constitutes a regular payment to a specific source that they may specify, but not necessarily one that will be paid in the system, merely one that will be tracked for record-keeping purposes. Bills which are, however, entered for regular payments on a specific schedule are paid with deposited funds and/or an approved business line of credit as applicable620, such as by using PAYPAL™ or STRIPE™ or direct bank-to-bank deposits, as the cases may be, while allowing for physical bills to be scanned or photographed using a mobile device or an office scanner, and, using the OCR engine in the financial application, may be scanned in as PDF's or photographed as images of other formats and have their characters recognized630. Bills scanned in this manner and recognized with OCR may then be split between parties, such as splitting between personnel under the same business account or even splitting a bill between multiple business accounts that may log in and consent to the splitting of the bill, with the application using a payment processor to process payment data from the multiple parties or single party for the bill640. OCR-recognized bills, and such bill payment schedules, and successful or failed payment attempts, are all then saved in the application's datastore650, for recordkeeping purposes, for all involved users and accounts.

FIG. 7is a method diagram of a financial application and accompanying system being used similarly to a fractional reserve banking system, where a business deposits funds, and a portion of the deposited money is used to fund other customers' credit. A business account administrator deposits funds on behalf of business or individual for credit payments, or to maintain a positive balance for payment purposes without utilizing credit710, using the payment processor of the financial application, at which point the financing application deposits funds into application's financial institution/account720. At this point, future businesses who utilize credit aspects of financing application are given credit from the financing application's financial account730, partial use of deposited funds from business A being used to fund business B constitutes fractional reserve banking on part of financing application740. For instance, say that the financing application has received $5,000 on a loan payment from Business A. Business B then is approved for a line of credit and needs to use $4,500 to pay for a renovation of a room in their office that was damaged in a small fire. The $4,500 that is lent to Business B comes from the payment that Business A made, thereby allowing Business A to pay off their debt while keeping liquidity high for future businesses that require money lending.

FIG. 8is message flow diagram of an exemplary system for financial services for abstraction of economies of scale for small businesses, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computer or computers, or a business-side mobile device or devices, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls. First, a business device sends a registration and settings communication to the front-end interface of the financing application810. This front-end interface serves to interface with customer devices, and forwards the data to the back-end application815, where it then, depending on the specific settings received from the registered user, may attempt to interface or integrate with third-party services820. Such an attempt at interfacing or integration may be different for different services, and may comprise one of or some combination of, communicating over established API's for the third-party services, accessing special or sequestered databases for the third-party services to find relevant data to act on regarding the customer, a specialized socket connection with software to receive and send automated messages to the financial application, or merely sending automated emails to service providers and parsing their responses (which may also be automated) in an effort to at least partially integrate with them. At this point, based on the input identifying information from a business which seeks to use the financial application, a credit data request is made to credit score or credit rating institutions825, which takes the form of a typical credit report request to the institution. The individual's, or business', credit report, is then handed back to the financial application830, at which point a similar request for information is made of any linked or specified financial institutions for a business,835. For instance, a business may specify that they do their banking with CHASE BANK™, and provide their banking number, routing number, and SSN, so that a request for a banking statement may be made, though a user may be made aware of this ahead of time to comply with local laws. The financial institution may respond with data including accounts and balances, banking statements, and scheduled payments, if any840. At this point, the system is ready for a user to request a business credit card, or line of credit845, on the application front-end, if they so choose. Using the GUI of the front-end for the application they may specify their purpose for requesting the credit, and any additional financial or credit rating related information if necessary, at which point the request and data is forwarded to the back-end logic again850, and the application may approve or deny the credit requests855based on a confluence of factors, the specific formulation of the credit rating for businesses not being a key innovation of the invention and which may be subject to change for implementations of the invention.

FIG. 9is a message flow diagram illustrating the system being used to order wares (i.e. supplies for a restaurant), optimize the timing from the perspective of inventory numbers and estimated delivery time, handle the money for such transactions as a business line of credit, and communicate with the third party to complete the order. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computer or computers, or a business-side mobile device or devices, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls.

First a business device120communicates with a front-end interface131to allow users to specify delivery and inventory settings910, which are sent to the back-end logic of the financial application920. Delivery and inventory settings include integration or interfacing with any inventory management software, delivery or supplier software or website for ordering and communicating with the supplier, or manually entering inventory information if necessary930. Such an attempt at interfacing or integration may be different for different services, and may comprise one of or some combination of, communicating over established API's for the third-party services, accessing special or sequestered databases for the third-party services to find relevant data to act on regarding the customer, a specialized socket connection with software to receive and send automated messages to the financial application, or merely sending automated emails to service providers and parsing their responses (which may also be automated) in an effort to at least partially integrate with them. Success or failure is sent back to the financing application940, in one of many ways similar to the integration or interface with third party services, at which point the status of delivery and inventory integration is forwarded to the front-end interface950to be viewed by the business device when desired960on the graphical user interface.

FIG. 10is a message flow diagram illustrating a financial application evaluating credit worthiness of businesses and employees, and issuing and utilizing credit cards based on evaluations of individuals and businesses. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computer or computers, or a business-side mobile device or devices, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls.

First a business device120communicates with a front-end interface131to allow users to apply for credit lines or credit cards1010, the requests being sent to the back-end logic of the financial application1020. A credit score request is made, ideally automatically but potentially also manually by staff operating the financial application on the back-end or in a customer service role, with known credit reporting agencies such as EQ,UIFAX™ or others1030. Insofar as automated attempts are made, such attempts at interfacing or integration for different services may comprise one of or some combination of, communicating over established API's for the third-party services, accessing special or sequestered databases for the third-party services to find relevant data to act on regarding the customer, a specialized socket connection with software to receive and send automated messages to the financial application, or merely sending automated emails to service providers and parsing their responses (which may also be automated) in an effort to at least partially integrate with them. When a credit request is properly made to the credit reporting or credit monitoring agency, a response may then be received1040either by email, socket communications, phone call, paper mail, or some other method, and used as part of or as the whole determination for credit lending to the business, which is then used to update the business account in the financial application that applied for credit. The update to the account information is visible to the business account administrators and includes important details about the application, whether it was approved, denied, the terms of the credit, credit limits, and so forth1050,1060.

FIG. 11is a message flow diagram illustrating a financial application tracking corporate expenses, scheduling payments for bills and other regular payments through the application as a creditor, and using Optical Character Recognition (“OCR”) to scan photographs of bills or invoices. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computer or computers, or a business-side mobile device or devices, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls.

A device with a connected camera, such as a web-camera connected to a computing device, a smartphone with a camera, or a tablet with a camera, may take a picture of a bill or invoice, or the bill or invoice may be scanned with an office scanner of some variety, before the scanned or photographed bill or invoice is sent to the application via the front-end interface1110over the internet. Included with the bill scan or photo, must be consent from at least one account or person on an account to split the invoice or bill between them, if that is what they desire, but if the purpose of scanning or photographing the bill is not to split it between multiple accounts, it does not require such consent from multiple persons. The data is handed to the backend logic of the application1120, which then may make the appropriate charges to the consenting parties in the bill if applicable1130to the financial institution or institutions that are specified in the application settings, with a success or failure message returned1140from the institution, as is common in the art to receive at least a failure message when communications between two services or devices malfunction or are rejected for some reason. The purpose for scanning bills in this manner may be to split them between parties, or prepare them for payment plans supported by the financial application, or merely to have photographic evidence stored in the application of the invoice or bill, for recordkeeping purposes. The status of the bill, if paid or a payment plan is specified, is then returned to the front-end interface1150to display to the account administrators1160.

FIG. 12is a message flow diagram of a financial application and accompanying system being used similarly to a fractional reserve banking system, where a business deposits funds, and a portion of the deposited money is used to fund other customers' credit. A Credit rating interface110exists as a software interface accessible over a network by other software systems, such as through an API, or some other common method of network interfacing between software systems, wherein the credit rating interface110is specifically an interface for communicating with and getting information from a credit rating agency or similar organization for credit rating and reporting purposes. In other words, a message can be sent to this interface, such as with an API call at a specific address and a verified token with the interface to identify the requestor, to request a credit score for a given Social Security Number (SSN), and the response may for instance be the credit score, or a failure message indicating why the message was rejected. There exist, as well, at least one but possibly a plurality of business-side devices120including a computer or computers, or a business-side mobile device or devices, where “business-side” in this context refers to a business that seeks to use the instant invention as a customer or client, the invention being designed to offer services to businesses. A mobile device in this or other contexts may refer to a mobile phone such as an IPHONE™ or ANDROID™ phone, a tablet, a personal digital assistant or PDA, a hybrid between a tablet and either a phone or laptop, or other mobile devices that may become common in the future for computing and networking purposes. A computer refers to a laptop or desktop, or similar computing device that is not normally considered a “mobile device” as a tablet or phone is, but which also may communicate over a network and operate complex software such as web browsers and applications. A server exists as well, a server being a computing device or a collection of computing devices which serve resources over a network (such as, but not limited to, websites and HTML pages over the Internet when you visit their address), and possesses a front-end web interface131which allows for a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and communications with external web services, a financing application132which represents the back-end logic of the server's main application and which comprises many software engines and components to offer specific operations and functionality to users, and a datastore to store data long-term. A financing application132may be comprised of code from one or multiple programming languages and paradigms, and may be one actively running application or several working in tandem, with the phrase “financing application” being an abstraction of the overall function of the business logic of the set of software programs that are running. A datastore may be a database such as a SQL or NOSQL database, it may be a connection to cloud storage on another service such as one with WINDOWS AZURE™ or other cloud service providers, or may be another implementation of a datastore that may be used for server storage. The server, business-side devices120, credit rating interface110, and other services or interfaces, communicate with some combination of each other or other services and devices over a network, which may be the Internet or a local or wide area network (LAN or WAN). Other services or institutions that a financial application132may communicate with include at least one financial institution150such as a bank, credit union, or payment system such as PAYPAL™, a regulatory agency160such as state or federal banking regulators, as may be required for certain practices, and a plurality of third-party web interface170which may include a variety of services such as delivery services, ware suppliers for inventory replenishment, third party bill splitting services or invoice services, and others. Such connections with services and institutions may be done with a combination of manual or automated communications, such as with email, socket communications, API calls and responses between the services, or phone calls. Data from a business device may be sent via the front end GUI, in the form of information and authorization for a financial deposit1210, which is then passed to the backend logic of the application1220. The deposition of funds is then relayed in an appropriate format to the requisite financial institutions, for instance perhaps the business has set up a PAYPAL™ account to send funds in this way to the operators of the financial application, in which case the PAYPAL™ account is polled for the funds and given the authorization as necessary, which is then deposited into the financial application's financial institution1230. A regulatory agency160may be informed of the deposit however, as far as banking and crediting efforts are regulated according to local laws, for the reason that the funds are intended to be used for fractional reserve banking1240, which the regulatory agency may deny or approve based on local laws1250. Such communications with a regulatory agency may be done manually or automatically, wherein such an attempt at interfacing or integration may be different for different services, and may comprise one of or some combination of, communicating over established API's for the third-party services, accessing special or sequestered databases for the third-party services to find relevant data to act on regarding the customer, a specialized socket connection with software to receive and send automated messages to the financial application, or merely sending automated emails to service providers and parsing their responses (which may also be automated) in an effort to at least partially integrate with them. If the laws and regulatory agency allow for the financial application operators to operate fractional reserve banking practices, then according to the practice, loans that are made available to other businesses1260,1270as normal, are funded at least partially with the funds deposited from the first business. In other words, business A may deposit funds equal to $6,500, with the financial application, to maintain a positive cash balance. Business B requests and is approved for a loan of $5,000. The financial application loans part of the $6,500 from business A to business B, covering the other part of the loan with funds available and owned by the operators of the financial application, making sure to hold enough funds so that any reasonable (which may change according to local laws) or expected withdrawals from accounts that may occur can still be covered with on-hand funds.

Hardware Architecture

Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented on hardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, they may be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate user process, in a library package bound into network applications, on a specially constructed machine, on an application-specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”), or on a network interface card.

Although the system shown inFIG. 13illustrates one specific architecture for a computing device10for implementing one or more of the inventions described herein, it is by no means the only device architecture on which at least a portion of the features and techniques described herein may be implemented. For example, architectures having one or any number of processors13may be used, and such processors13may be present in a single device or distributed among any number of devices. In one embodiment, a single processor13handles communications as well as routing computations, while in other embodiments a separate dedicated communications processor may be provided. In various embodiments, different types of features or functionalities may be implemented in a system according to the invention that includes a client device (such as a tablet device or smartphone running client software) and server systems (such as a server system described in more detail below).