Patent ID: 8069121

Claim:
A method for a merchant to perform a payment processing transaction, the method comprising: at a merchant payment system, identifying customer identification data and unencrypted payment device data; encrypting the unencrypted payment device data, wherein identifying customer identification data and unencrypted payment device data and encrypting the unencrypted payment device data includes, at a secure storage device, capturing at least the unencrypted payment device data and encrypting the unencrypted payment device data, and storing the encrypted payment device data while the secure storage device does not have an active connection to a secure payment system; submitting a first payment processing request to the secure payment system, wherein the payment processing request includes the customer identification data and the encrypted payment device data, wherein submitting a first payment processing request to a secure payment system further includes establishing a connection between the secure storage device and the secure payment system and using a client application on the merchant payment system to read the stored encrypted payment device data to generate the first payment processing request without storing the encrypted payment device data at the merchant payment system such that the encrypted payment device data is not visible to the merchant; receiving a unique identifier associated with a customer account that was generated in response to the first payment processing request; submitting a second payment processing request to the secure payment system such that the merchant is only required to identify the unique identifier of the customer account and not unencrypted payment device data or encrypted payment device data of the at least one payment device; receiving a status from the secure payment system that the second payment processing request is approved, declined, or has experienced an instance of process failure; and after receiving the status from the secure payment system that the second payment processing request is approved, declined, or has experienced an instance of process failure, deleting the stored encrypted payment device data from the secure storage device.