Patent ID: 8543474

Claim:
A method for handling a recharge service, comprising: receiving, by a service control point (SCP), a recharge service request including a recharge card ID and a user account to be recharged; sending, by the SCP, an authentication request to an online charging system (OCS) to query an abnormal recharge log stored by the OCS, wherein the abnormal recharge log is logged by the OCS when receiving an instruction from the SCP, when the SCP fails to receive an acknowledgement indicating a successful recharge from the OCS within a predetermined time period, after the SCP sends a recharge request, or when the OCS fails to generate or send the acknowledgement indicating the successful recharge, and the abnormal recharge log includes (a) recharge result information indicating whether a recharging process has been successfully performed in the OCS and (b) an recharge ID corresponding to the recharge result information; checking whether the abnormal recharge log includes the recharge card ID and whether the recharging process has been successfully performed in the OCS via a recharge card associated with the recharge card ID according to the abnormal recharge log; and requesting, by the SCP, a voucher center to authenticate the recharge card associated with the recharge card ID so that the voucher center may recharge, after the recharge card passes the authentication, the user account via the recharge card if the recharge card ID carried in the recharge service request is not contained in the abnormal recharge log, or the recharging process has not been successfully performed via the recharge card associated with the recharge card ID carried in the recharge service request.