Patent ID: 7882153

Claim:
A method for electronic messaging of trade data, comprising: receiving, by an accounting software application (ASA) operated by a first buyer and executing on a hardware device, an e-mail comprising a first bill issued by a seller, wherein the first bill comprises a first set of unstructured trade data having an unknown format, and wherein the unstructured trade data comprises individual trade data elements; sending, by the ASA and in response to receiving the e-mail, the first bill to a format resolution service (FRS) using a computer network operatively connecting the hardware device and the FRS; identifying, by the FRS and in response to receiving the first bill, a second bill issued by the seller to a second buyer and comprising a second set of unstructured trade data; determining, by the FRS and using the first and second bill, an encryption scheme used by the seller; identifying, by the FRS, a sequence of characters identically situated in both the first set of unstructured trade data and the second set of unstructured trade data; designating, by the FRS, the sequence of characters as a keyword; generating, by the FRS, a mapping between the keyword and a trade data element following the keyword in the first set of unstructured trade data; sending, by the FRS, the mapping and the encryption scheme to the ASA; obtaining, by the ASA, the trade data element from the first bill by parsing the first set of unstructured trade data according to the mapping; storing the trade data element in a trade data repository; obtaining, by the ASA, the trade data element from the trade data repository; and paying, by the ASA, a plurality of bills simultaneously by accessing a bill payment interface, wherein the plurality of bills comprises the first bill.