Patent ID: 7236950

Claim:
A method of combined billing for at least one customer on a plurality of customer accounts, comprising: receiving account data for the plurality of customer accounts electronically from time-to-time by a service provider from each of a plurality of billers; acquiring ownership of receivables represented by the account data by the service provider under contractual arrangements with the plurality of billers upon receipt of the account data; automatically calculating account charges for the plurality of customer accounts from the account data; aggregating the account charges for at least one customer on the plurality of customer accounts; automatically formatting a combined bill for the customer from the aggregated account charges; and automatically rendering the combined bill to the customer; wherein at least one of the plurality of accounts is a recurring bill account, wherein the customer continues to purchase products or services from at least one of the billers after the service provider acquires ownership of the receivables associated with the account data received, and wherein the service provider acquires ownership of receivables associated with the subsequently purchased products or services after receiving account data for the customer account from the at least one biller.