Patent ID: 7599863

Claim:
A method for purchasing over the internet by a customer using a merchant having an internet site at which the merchant offers goods and/or services; and wherein a bank authorizes the purchase in association with a customer account and assures payment to the merchant, comprising: communicating between a customer computer used by a customer user and a merchant computer via the internet; assembling order information for a customer order using the merchant computer and customer computer during said communicating step, said assembling step including a plurality of available order variables; building a customer order file which contains a plurality of customer order variables; building a merchant order file which does not include all of said plurality of customer order variables, such that the merchant has incomplete order information; said communicating and said assembling steps being performed without communicating a customer account number or similar customer account identification via the internet which may be used to make fraudulent charges against the customer account; assigning a transaction identifier during said building a customer order file and said building a merchant order file; said transaction identifier not being useful for making other transactions against the customer account; communicating between the customer computer and bank computer via the internet involving the customer order file; conducting an identification inquiry between the bank computer and customer computer to verify the authenticity of the customer user as acceptable for conducting transactions against said customer account; communicating between the customer computer and bank computer via the internet to provide at least one customer order variable not provided to the merchant in said building a merchant order file and said transaction identifier; authorizing by the customer computer to the bank computer a purchase transaction based upon said customer order information and including said transaction identifier, merchant identification and at least one customer order variable not known by the merchant from said building a merchant order file; communicating between the bank computer and the merchant computer with the bank computer providing said transaction identifier and said at least one order variable which is not included in the merchant order file; providing in said communicating between the bank computer and the merchant computer said transaction identifier and said at least one customer order variable not provided to the merchant in said building a merchant order file needed by the merchant to proceed with merchant processing of the customer order; assuring payment from the bank computer to said merchant computer without using any customer account number or identifier which can be used to transact business using the customer account.