Patent ID: 8280751

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more computing devices comprising a processor and a memory; a rules database executing on the one or more computing devices and comprising rules data used in a calculation of payment options by a billing module; an agreement database executing on the one or more computing devices and comprising agreement data related to users who have an automatic payment agreement plan in place; and a billing module executing on the one or more computing devices and operable to use the rules data to perform the calculation of payment options in order to provide a standard payment option and a reduced initial payment option, wherein: the standard payment option includes an initial payment that is a percentage of a total amount for an insurance policy and a number of payments subsequent to the initial payment, wherein the number of payments subsequent to the initial payment are not made by automatic periodic withdrawals that are part of an automatic payment agreement, and wherein a total of the initial payment and the number of payments subsequent to the initial payment equal the total amount for the insurance policy; and the reduced initial payment option includes a first payment that is a percentage of the total amount for the insurance policy that is less than the percentage of the standard amount option and a number of payments subsequent to the first payment, wherein the number of payments subsequent to the first payment are made by automatic periodic withdrawals that are part of an automatic payment agreement, and wherein a total of the first payment and the number of payments subsequent to the first payment equal the total amount for the insurance policy; a quoting module executing on the one or more computing devices and operable to: communicate an offer for the insurance policy, to a user, to complete a purchase using either the standard payment option or the reduced initial payment option; complete the purchase using the reduced initial payment option in response to either: receiving an automatic payment agreement associated with the purchase to provide automatic periodic withdrawals from an account for a number of payments that are subsequent to the first payment; or automatically determining that the user making the purchase is an existing customer having an existing automatic payment agreement plan by consulting the agreement database, in response to receiving a selection of the reduced initial payment option; and provide a product associated with the purchase in response to activating the insurance policy by receiving the first payment or the initial payment.