Patent ID: 7424452

Claim:
A system for electronically exchanging data related to financial transactions, the system comprising: a plurality of internal systems of a plurality of price providers including a plurality of application program interfaces, each of the plurality of application program interfaces in communication with a respective internal computer system of a respective price provider to provide normalized data to the respective internal computer system, each of said plurality of price providers providing price quotes for trading financial instruments and executing trades for a plurality of customers; a plurality of electronic portals, at least two of said plurality of electronic portals using one of multiple different portal-specific data formats to allow a particular customer to use any of said plurality of electronic portals to which said customer has access to communicate with said internal computer systems of any of said plurality of price providers; a plurality of gateways, each gateway being linked to a corresponding one of said plurality of electronic portals, wherein said plurality of gateways translate data received from any of said plurality of electronic portals from a respective first portal-specific format to a second normalized format, and for translating data received in the second normalized format from said price provider to the respective first portal-specific format of the particular portal of said plurality of electronic portals to which the data is routed and a central transit point that links said plurality of gateways to said internal computer systems of each of said plurality of price providers and through which the normalized data is transmitted to said plurality of price providers.