Patent ID: 8359266

Claim:
A financial transaction system for conducting transactions across financial institutions, comprising: a set of financial institutions, each financial institution comprising: a host system; a first data store associated with the host system and comprising account information for that financial institution; a second data store comprising data on users of the financial transaction system; a user interface configured to present a user with a bill pay interface to allow the user to initiate a bill payment transaction to a provider; a financial institution transaction coordinator instance configured to determine if the provider has an account associated with the financial institution on the host system and to determine one or more first requests corresponding to the bill payment transaction based on this determination, wherein each of the one or more first requests is intended for a host specific adapter or a financial transaction center adapter at the financial institution; the financial transaction center adapter configured to receive any of the one or more first requests intended for it and based on the one or more first requests to form one or more second requests according to a first set of standardized interfaces, each of the first set of standardized interfaces associated with a first set of requests and wherein the financial transaction center adapter is also configured to receive a first response for each of the first set of requests; and the host specific adapter tailored to the host system of the financial institution and operable to implement any of the one or more first requests intended for it in conjunction with the host system utilizing an interface tailored to the host system of the financial institution; and a financial transaction center coupled to the financial institutions, comprising: a service interface, configured to receive a second request from a first financial institution according to the first set of standardized interfaces associated with the first set of requests and further configured to provide a second response for each of the first set of requests; a transaction control coordinator, configured to determine if the provider has an account at a second financial institution and, if so, determine one or more third requests corresponding to the second received request and the second financial institution associated with the provider and assemble the second response for the first financial institution based on a response to the one or more third requests; a requestor configured to issue each of the third request to the second financial institution and receive the response for each of the third requests from the second financial institution.