Patent ID: 8655774

Claim:
A method of processing a purchase transaction for one or more items, the method comprising: receiving, at a central computing network, magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) information associated with a financial account of a customer, wherein: the central computing network includes a solicitation processor and a comprehensive negative check file, the comprehensive negative check file is maintained by a retail corporation and comprises an internal negative check file and an external negative check file, the internal negative check file includes at least a list of outstanding checks to the retail corporation that are unpaid due to non-sufficient funds, and the external negative check file includes a copy of a file compiled by a third party check authorization service, and using the solicitation processor of the central computing network to determine whether to solicit the customer to apply for a financial transaction card, wherein using the solicitation processor includes: determining if any of a plurality of predefined reasons exist not to solicit the customer to apply for the financial transaction card, wherein one of the plurality of predefined reasons includes if the MICR information associated with the financial account of the customer matches MICR information of a check listed in the comprehensive negative check file, if any of the plurality of predefined reasons exist, deciding not to solicit the customer to apply for the financial transaction card, and if none of the plurality of predefined reasons exist, deciding to solicit the customer to apply for the financial transaction card.