Patent ID: 8504477

Claim:
A method for automated processing of positive pay return decisions, the method comprising: identifying, by a computing device processor, one or more suspect pay items by receiving a payment issue file, from a financial institution client, which includes information pertaining to a plurality of pending pay items and comparing the information in the payment issue file to information on received pay items; providing, by a computing device processor, the one or more suspect pay items to a financial institution client; receiving, at a computing device, decisions on the one or more suspect pay items from the client, wherein one or more of the decisions is a return decision; and processing, automatically, by a computing device processor, the one or more return decisions at the financial institution, wherein processing includes: crediting one or more accounts associated with the one or more suspect pay items based on the one or more return decisions received from the client, and deleting one or more pay items associated with the one or more return decisions from a database that indicates a pay status, wherein deleting includes: assigning a temporary “not-on-file” status to each of the one or more pay items requiring deletion, maintaining visibility of the “not-on-file” status for a reconciliation cycle, and upon expiration of the reconciliation cycle, deleting the pay item from the database and removing visibility of the “not-on-file” status.