Patent ID: 7028008

Claim:
An electronic bill pay system comprising: a biller; a consumer who electronically directs a consumer financial institution to electronically pay a bill provided by said biller; a bill pay network wherein said bill pay network facilitates an electronic transfer of funds from an account of said consumer at said consumer financial institution to an account of said biller; said bill received by said consumer from said biller, said bill having machine-readable data fields comprising a biller identifier field, a consumer-biller account number identifier field, an error correction field, and a detection data field; data capture means for capturing said machine-readable data fields from said bill, said data capture means controlled by said consumer; a consumer terminal receiving captured data fields from said data capture means; a bill pay order generator for generating a bill pay order and electronically transmitting said bill pay order to said bill pay network; a billing information table that contains valid biller identification numbers and consumer-biller account numbers obtained from said bill pay network; a validation device configured to validate said captured data fields using said billing information table, said validation device also configured to detect and correct reading errors in said captured data fields using error correction and detection data and to detect whether said captured data fields contain an expected number of bits, wherein said consumer terminal is configured to prompt said consumer to recapture said machine-readable data fields if invalid data is detected; a data receiving device configured to receive consumer entered data; and a table receiving device configured to receive said billing information tables from said bill pay network.