Patent ID: 8326766

Claim:
A system for facilitating electronic transactions, the system comprising: a transaction card containing point-of-sale readable information, the transaction card being issued by an issuer to a qualified consumer, wherein the qualified consumer becomes a cardholder having a privilege to execute purchase transactions with the transaction card at a plurality of merchants by submitting valid demand deposit account (DDA) information for a checking account of the cardholder, and wherein the checking account is provided by a financial institution other than the issuer of the transaction card; an authorization server adapted for communication, through a payment network, with point-of-sale transaction terminals; and programming associated with the authorization server for: receiving transaction information, through the payment network, from one of the point-of-sale transaction terminals in response to an attempted transaction by the cardholder using the transaction card, issuing a declined message and terminating card processing if the transaction card is invalid or the attempted transaction falls outside limits of card usage, authorizing the transaction by generating a debit transaction for the checking account of the cardholder utilizing an automated clearing house (ACH) network, and settling the transaction at a time subsequent to the execution of the transaction by sweeping funds from the checking account of the cardholder.