Patent ID: 7725372

Claim:
An automated transaction processing system for electronically processing transactions involving buyers and sellers, the system comprising: a correlation database that stores contract data sets, each set being defined pursuant to a stored agreement between the buyer and seller involved in the transaction to which the contract data set applies, profile data for each transaction including payment terms defined by at least one of a buyer and seller in each transaction, the payment terms including information that, when used with transaction data in an algorithm executed by a computer processor, generates payment approval data, and underwriting data stored for each of a multitude of disparate financier parties that finance transactions by extending credit for providing payment for the transactions, a transaction processor arrangement programmed to process electronic transactions according to the stored contract data sets and profile data, each transaction being characterized by a transaction data set received from a transaction participant, the transaction processor arrangement comprising a correlation engine configured to correlate each received set of transaction data with a contract data set, with profile data for the transaction and with underwriting data for a financier that will underwrite payment for the transaction, a computer-implemented auditing engine programmed, for each transaction involving a buyer and at least one seller, to execute an algorithm for auditing a transaction data set for the transaction using the correlated contract data set and profile data for the transaction as inputs to the algorithm to determine a condition of payment authorization for the transaction, and to generate computer-readable audit data characterizing the audit, a computer-implemented underwriting engine programmed, for each transaction data set for which payment is authorized, to execute an algorithm using the correlated underwriting data as an input to authorize the extension of credit to fund the payment, a computer-implemented payment processor programmed, for each transaction data set, to process electronic payment to each seller financial institution pertaining to the transaction data set in response to generated audit data indicating that payment to the seller is appropriate for at least one transaction involving the seller and a buyer, using an extension of credit authorized via the underwriting engine, and a computer-implemented fee assessment engine programmed to assess a transaction processing fee, for each seller to which electronic payment is made, by generating computer-readable fee data that associates the fee and a fee amount with a seller for which the fee data is generated.