Patent ID: 8260694

Claim:
A computer program product embodied on a tangible computer readable medium, comprising: computer code for receiving, utilizing a uniform billing application program interface, information associated with a transaction, the information associated with the transaction including an indication of a type of the transaction, an account number, an identifier of a user, and a charge amount for the transaction, the uniform billing application program interface capable of receiving the information from a plurality of different types of billing sources including a merchant, a payment provider, and a billing aggregator; computer code for determining whether the transaction is of a first type, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface; computer code for determining whether the transaction is of a second type, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface; computer code for determining whether the transaction is of a third type, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface; computer code for managing billing of the transaction utilizing the uniform billing application program interface which is accessible to the plurality of different types of billing sources, the managing including: if it is determined that the transaction is of the first type, submitting, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface, a first type of charging instructions for the transaction to a payment provider, if it is determined that the transaction is of the second type, submitting, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface, a second type of charging instructions for the transaction to the payment provider, if it is determined that the transaction is of the third type, submitting, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface, a third type of charging instructions for the transaction to the payment provider, and receiving, utilizing the uniform billing application program interface, a transaction response; computer code for returning a billing response to at least one of the billing sources from which the information associated with the transaction was received, based on the transaction response, the billing response including one of an indication that the transaction was successful, an indication that the transaction failed, and an indication that the transaction is pending; computer code for receiving a flag set by a merchant wherein the merchant may set the flag to true or false, wherein a false setting indicates that the payment service provider is to generate and send an advice-of-charge; and computer code for determining whether the flag is set to false; wherein if it is determined that the flag is set to false, the merchant is prevented from sending an advice-of-charge generated by the merchant, and if it is determined that the flag is set to true, the merchant is not prevented from sending an advice-of-charge generated by the merchant.