Patent ID: 7620602

Claim:
A method for developing an application for an on-line service system, the method comprising: under control of a computing system configured with processor executable instructions, establishing a development account of a third-party biller and establishing development account storage space for the third-party biller on a development system within the on-line service system, the development account uniquely identifying authorized developers of the third-party biller, storing the application to the development account storage space on the development system, wherein the application: is developed by at least one of the authorized developers of the third-party biller through one or more scripting languages; and comprises a first component and a second component, the first component being hosted by the on-line service system to navigate a user interface (UI) and invoke one or more functions of the on-line service system, the second component being hosted by the third-party biller to provide detailed billing information not stored at the on-line service system, the first component, responsive to a user request, being configured to redirect a browser from the on-line service system to the third-party biller so that the user accesses the detailed billing information via the third-party biller hosting the second component; invoking, at the on-line service system, an automated validation agent for validating the application before promoting the application to production status for use by the on-line service system, the validating comprising analyzing codes of the application for conflicts, programming errors and security problems; and disabling the biller development account after the application is promoted, whereby the authorized developers are denied access to the development system.