Patent ID: 6999943

Claim:
A method for charging a payment transaction to a customer, said method comprising the steps of: (a) offering an incentive to identify a plurality of payment instruments usable to consummate said transaction; (b) obtaining from said customer information describing at least two payment instruments from said plurality of payment instruments identified by said customer, wherein: (i) said customer is willing to allow said payment transaction to be processed using any of said described payment instruments, (ii) said described payment instruments utilize different funding sources, and (iii) each of said described payment instruments is usable for processing said payment transaction in its entirety; (c) submitting information regarding said described payment instruments to a computer-implemented transaction evaluator configured to automatically select one of said described payment instruments based on relative economic utility of said described payment instruments; (d) receiving from said transaction evaluator the transaction evaluator's selection of one of said described payment instruments; (e) notifying said customer which of said payment instruments was selected; and (f) receiving funds for the payment of said transaction using said selected payment instrument.