Patent ID: 7104443

Claim:
A system for facilitating electronic funds transactions between a cardholder and a participating merchant, comprising: a debit card having a card number and containing point of sale readable account information, as part of a plurality of said debit cards issued to consumers within a merchant-based debit card program; said card number beginning with a unique International Standards Organization (ISO) identification number assigned for the given merchant based debit card network to which transactions are routed for processing: said debit card is issued by a merchant, participating in said merchant-based debit card program as an issuing merchant, to a qualified consumer; said qualified consumer becomes a cardholder having a privilege under said debit card program to execute purchase transactions at a plurality of merchants participating in said merchant-based debit card program as acquiring merchants in response to submitting valid demand deposit account (DDA) information for a checking account of the cardholder; a network enabled computer having a debit card data base of cardholder information, information on participating acquiring merchants, and merchant information associated with a plurality of issuing merchants participating in said merchant-based debit card program: said network enabled computer is adapted for communication through conventional card processing services and point of sale transaction terminals at participating acquiring merchants; and programming associated with said computer for, receiving transaction information through said conventional card processing services from point of sale transaction terminals in response to an attempted purchase transaction by said cardholder using said debit card, verifying cardholder identity associating a personal identifier with customer information from said data base, issuing a declined message and terminating card processing if the card is invalid or the requested transaction falls outside the limits of card usage, accepting said transaction executing said debit transaction for the checking account associated with the cardholder DDA utilizing an automated clearing house (ACH) network, settling the transaction at a time subsequent to the execution of said transaction through a card processing service from funds retained within the associated checking account, charging the acquiring merchant a fee for executing said transaction, and remitting a portion of said charged fee to the issuing merchant of said merchant based debit card.