Patent ID: 6847947

Claim:
A method for processing debit transactions at the lowest cost available, the method comprising: providing a merchant network list which corresponds to the merchant identification number, the merchant network list comprising debit networks available for access by the merchant; providing a customer network list which corresponds to the customer account number, the customer network list comprising debit networks available for access by the customer account; matching the debit networks of the merchant network list and the customer network list and generating a merchant-customer network list with the matched debit networks of the merchant network list and the customer network list; communicating with a network information file and determining the validity for each debit network of the merchant-customer network list to process a debit transaction, each valid debit network of the merchant-customer network list having a cost for processing the debit transaction; eliminating each invalid debit network from the merchant-customer network list; sorting the valid debit networks of the merchant-customer network list as a function of the cost for processing the debit transaction; communicating with a routing and processing database to determine a routing and processing method which corresponds to each debit network of the sorted merchant-customer network list; and applying the first routing and processing method corresponding to the debit network of the sorted merchant-customer network list having the lowest cost to process the debit transaction and if the first routing and processing method is not available, applying the next ranked routing and processing method corresponding to the debit network of the sorted merchant-customer network list having the next lowest cost to process the debit transaction.