Patent ID: 7962418

Claim:
A method of fulfilling a transaction, the method comprising: under control of a configured server computer system associated with an electronic commerce website, determining a customer-specific sequence of a plurality of financial instruments of a customer that are associated with an account of the customer at the electronic commerce website, the customer-specific sequence indicating an order of the financial instruments that includes at least a first financial instrument and a second financial instrument, and wherein data related to the second financial instrument was previously received from the customer in connection with a second transaction related to a second offering of the electronic commerce website, the second offering including at least one of a second product and a second service being offered for purchase by customers; at a first time, receiving an indication of a first transaction involving the customer and a first offering of the electronic commerce website, the first offering including at least one of a first product and a first service being offered for purchase by customers, the first transaction being authorized by the customer at an earlier time prior to the first time for payment for the first transaction, the indication of the first transaction being received by the configured server computer system at the first time without any interactions by the customer at the first time to initiate the payment for the first transaction; automatically selecting the first financial instrument to use in an attempt to collect the payment associated with the first transaction, the selecting being based on the determined customer-specific sequence and being performed by the configured server computer system; and automatically attempting, using the configured server computer system, to collect the payment associated with the first transaction by using the selected first financial instrument; and at a later second time after the first time, and based at least in part on a lack of success of the attempting to collect the payment by using the selected first financial instrument, automatically attempting to collect the payment for the first transaction by using the second financial instrument, the second financial instrument being selected to be used at the second time by the configured server computer system based on the determined customer-specific sequence and without any interactions by the customer at the second time to initiate the use of the second financial instrument for payment of the first transaction.