Patent ID: 6970843

Claim:
A financial transaction network for facilitating direct management of financial assets for customers in individual program accounts, comprising: means allowing a customer to access his individual program account, the individual program account being an account representing an array of accounts that have been individually selected by the customer from the totality of the accounts and including at least one stored value account, (â€œSVAâ€, which is a nonbank credit account maintained by a merchant for the customer), for a merchant, a host processor for executing transaction instructions and maintaining individual program account information, said host processor including a database for maintaining individual program account transactions and records, means for establishing and maintaining a plurality of customer individual program accounts and, means to support a customers' transactional interchange of said individual program account including access to a stored value account having been pre-authorized by a customer to settle transactions and, means enabling a customer to utilize the value in the customer's stored value account and instruct the merchant to credit the customer's demand deposit account at a bank with funds from said merchant's demand deposit account.