Patent ID: 8019658

Claim:
A method for purchasing over the internet by a customer using a merchant having an internet site at which the merchant offers goods and/or services; and wherein a bank authenticates the purchase in association with a customer account and assures payment to the merchant, comprising: communicating between a customer computer used by a customer user and a merchant computer via the internet; assembling order information for a customer order using the merchant computer and customer computer during said communicating step, said assembling step including a plurality of available order variables; building a customer order file which contains a plurality of customer order variables; building a merchant order file which does not include all of said plurality of customer order variables, such that the merchant has incomplete order information; said communicating and said assembling steps being performed without communicating a customer account number or similar customer account identification via the internet which may be used to make fraudulent charges against the customer account; assigning a transaction identifier during said building a customer order file and said building a merchant order file; said transaction identifier not being useful for making other transactions against the customer account; communicating between the customer computer and bank computer via the internet involving the customer order file; authenticating the customer user using the bank computer and the customer computer to verify the authenticity of the customer user as acceptable for conducting transactions against said customer account; communicating between the customer computer and the bank computer via the internet to provide at least one customer order variable needed by the merchant to complete processing and not provided to the merchant in said building a merchant order file; communicating between the bank computer and the merchant computer via the internet with the bank computer providing at least one of said order variables which are not included in the merchant order file needed for the merchant to complete the order other than assurance of payment; assuring payment from the bank computer to said merchant computer via the internet using said transaction identification and without using any customer account number or identifier which can be used to transact business using the customer account.