Patent ID: 6968319

Claim:
In an electronic bill presentment and payment remittance system, a method for electronically presenting a bill to a consumer and for electronically remitting a payment of the bill from the consumer, comprising the following steps: generating a bill and associated payment remittance information at a biller, the payment remittance information being arranged within a data structure according to a format prescribed by the biller, the data structure having one or more open data fields to hold data that a consumer can enter or alter and one or more closed data fields to hold data that the consumer cannot alter, the remittance information further including hidden structured remittance data that is kept hidden from the consumer; electronically transmitting the bill and associated payment remittance information to the consumer; displaying a bill presentment user interface (UI) on a visual display, the bill presentment UI including items with predefined dispute reasons expressing possible reasons why the consumer might wish to challenge a particular item on the bill; enabling the consumer to: select a particular predefined dispute reason for a particular item on the bill; and authorize electronic payment of the bill; associating with the payment remittance information: the particular predefined dispute reason for the particular item; and the electronic payment; transmitting the payment remittance information, including the structured remittance data, from the consumer back to the biller in the format prescribed by the biller.