Patent ID: 8015110

Claim:
A network-based electronic payment transaction processing system, comprising: two or more back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems; and a transport-aggregating clear-text Internet transaction (TACIT) server, in communication between the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems and Internet end users, for simultaneously aggregating multiple payment transactions from the Internet end users and presenting an aggregated transaction over to any one of the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems by means of a respective one of a plurality of persistent back-end sockets, each of the persistent back-end sockets being associated with a respective one of the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems; wherein the TACIT server is configured to reformat any of the transactions to insert fields in a message format utilized to communicate with one or more of the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems, and wherein the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems together process the multiple payment transactions from the Internet end users with fault-tolerance and load balancing among the back-end electronic payment transaction processing host systems, wherein the transport-aggregating, clear text Internet transaction (TACIT) server inspects data contained in a header portion of application data of each transaction and validates the transaction before presenting it as part of the aggregated transmission control protocol transaction to the one of the persistent back-end sockets, and wherein the transport-aggregating clear-text Internet transaction (TACIT) server is further for building a state table that uniquely distinguishes each of the payment transactions from the Internet end users on the respective one of the one or more persistent back-end sockets.