Patent ID: 8725597

Claim:
A computer program product, comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer-readable program instructions embodied thereon that when executed by a computer cause the computer to predict reliability of merchants, the computer-readable program instructions comprising: computer-readable program instructions to define an inspection template listing a first merchant reliability characteristic and a second merchant reliability characteristic; computer-readable program instructions to collect data parameter values about the merchant based on the characteristics listed in the inspection template, the data parameter values comprising a binary parameter value representing the first merchant reliability characteristic and a variable parameter value representing the second merchant reliability characteristic; computer-readable program instructions to map each of the determined parameter values to a corresponding a point value; computer-readable program instructions to combine the point values into at a first sub-score value pertaining to a merchant-provided reliability characteristic and a second sub-score value pertaining to a non-merchant-provided reliability characteristic; computer-readable program instructions to compute a merchant reliability metric, the merchant reliability metric predicting reliability of the merchant by applying each of the sub-score values as a contribution to the merchant reliability metric; and computer-readable program instructions to present the merchant reliability metric to the potential customer of the merchant.