Patent ID: 7729984

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining, on computer systems by a group of financial institutions that are associated with a credit-only transaction system, computer-implemented financial accounts on behalf of account holders of the financial institutions, each of the financial institutions being a trusted party with respect to account information of the financial accounts of its own account holders, each of the financial accounts having account identifiers including a credit-only account identifier that is unique across the group of financial institutions, the relationship between the credit-only account identifier and other account identifiers for a given financial account being accessible only to or by permission of the financial institution that maintains the financial account, and enabling, through the computer systems, a third party to initiate a credit-only transaction directed to one of the financial accounts maintained on behalf of one of the account holders, by presenting the credit-only account identifier of that account at any of the financial institutions in the group, enabling the financial institution to which the credit-only account identifier is presented, without requiring more information than the credit-only account identifier, to obtain a corresponding unprotected reference to the financial institution that maintains the related financial account and to route the credit-only transaction towards the financial institution that maintains the related financial account for processing as a credit-only transaction, the credit-only identifier enabling value to be added to the related financial account but not enabling value to be subtracted from the account, the financial institution to which the credit-only account identifier is presented by the third party being not necessarily a trusted party with respect to the account information of the account holder, the financial institution that maintains the related financial account being a trusted party with respect to the account information to protect the financial account of the account holder.