Patent ID: 7566002

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a transaction gateway, a communication associated with a transaction initiated by a customer, the communication including one or more requests, each of the requests associated with a transaction service; determining, at the transaction gateway, the communication includes an identity verification request to verify encoded data obtained from an identification presented by the customer; routing the identity verification request to an identity verification service, wherein the identity verification service comprises a processing unit, memory, a communications interface and one or more software programs, wherein the identity verification service receives the identity verification request via the communications interface; receiving, at the transaction gateway, a result from the identity verification service, the result including one or more identification values obtained from the encoded data; and transmitting the result to a requester associated with the communication; further comprising parsing, at the identity verification service, the encoded data to obtain the one or more identification values, wherein parsing occurs using the processing unit and the one or more software programs of the identity verification service; determining, at the identity verification service, whether a criteria is satisfied indicating the identification may be fraudulent; and transmitting, from the identity verification service, the result, the result indicating the identification may be fraudulent; and wherein the transaction gateway is operable to route a plurality of the requests from the communication to a plurality of different corresponding transaction service providers; and wherein the transaction gateway is operable to route a plurality of the requests from the communication to a plurality of different corresponding transaction service providers.