Patent ID: 8370265

Claim:
A method for managing payment instruments associated with customer accounts in a computing system controlled by an intermediary service, the computing system including a processor and a storage area, the method comprising: maintaining customer accounts in the storage area, wherein each customer account includes an account identifier and information specifying one or more payment instruments associated with that customer account, wherein each payment instrument is provided by an issuing institution different from the intermediary service; maintaining information in the storage area that correlates payment instruments to issuing institutions that issued each payment instrument; receiving, from a user, multiple change requests specifying changes in status for a selected payment instrument stored in the storage area, such that the selected payment instrument may be enabled and disabled at user request multiple times during a time period in which the selected payment instrument is in use; determining the correlated issuing institution based on the selected payment instrument; and based on the specified changes in status, storing an indication that specifies whether the payment instrument is enabled, wherein the status indication is utilized to determine whether to accept an authorization request against the payment instrument.