Patent ID: 8170954

Claim:
A method of processing commercial transactions carried out over the Internet between account holders and participating merchants, said method comprising the steps of: (a) establishing account privileges defining boundaries outside of which transactions are not to be authorized for each account holder's account, said privileges including merchant-specific virtual purchase orders selectively set up by the account holders via manipulation of the account privileges, wherein those transactions which fall under the virtual purchase orders are authorized; (b) receiving a buyer's purchase request from a participating merchant indicating that the buyer desires to carry out a transaction with the merchant, said transaction including the buyer purchasing one or more selected items from the merchant; (c) authenticating the buyer as an account holder in response to receiving the buyer's purchase request, wherein the authenticating is performed by a processor; (d) receiving transaction details from the participating merchant after authenticating the buyer, said transaction details including a cost for the selected items; and, (e) authorizing completion of the transaction when the transaction details do not violate established account privileges and the account holder's account is full enough to cover the cost, wherein the authorizing is performed by a processor.