Patent ID: 7318047

Claim:
A method for facilitating electronic refunds in an online commercial transaction, the method comprising the steps of: A) establishing communication over a network between a payment computer and a buyer computer, the payment computer having a vault with buyer funds therein and a refund account for a buyer that tracks the refund activity of the buyer; B) receiving at the payment computer a plurality of requests from the buyer computer to purchase items, each of the plurality of requests being associated with a corresponding one of the items; C) accepting the plurality of requests to purchase items and debiting the vault to account for costs related to all of the items; D) receiving at the payment computer from the buyer computer a buyer selected request to refund the cost of at least one of the corresponding ones of the items; and E) upon receipt of the request to refund, the payment computer accounting for the cost of the at least one of the corresponding ones of the items in the refund account and crediting the vault with the cost of the at least one of the corresponding ones of the items thereby effectuating a refund to the buyer.