SELECTING A PREFERRED PAYMENT INSTRUMENT BASED ON A MERCHANT CATEGORY

摘要

The invention provides a computer-implemented method to select a preferred card for a purchase based on a merchant category. In the exemplary method, the computer associates a plurality of financial accounts with an account of a user; associates a merchant category with a financial account associated with the user account; and receives data from a transaction. The computer can maintain a database of merchant categories; determine the category of the merchant based on the data associated with the transaction; and extract data to identify the merchant, such as merchant name, address, or telephone number. The computer can determine the geo-location of the user device and determine the merchant identify from the location. The computer can determine a merchant category of the merchant from the merchant identity; select the financial account associated with the merchant category of the merchant; and communicate the financial account selected to conduct the transaction.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method to determine a merchant category for a merchant and to select a payment instrument for a purchase based on the merchant category, comprising:
associating, by a computer, a plurality of financial accounts with a user account of a user, the user account being maintained by the computer; for one or more of the financial accounts associated with the user account, associating, by the computer, one of a plurality of merchant categories with the respective financial account; receiving, by the computer from a user computing device, data from a transaction of the user account with a merchant, the transaction being initiated with a communication between a point of sale terminal associated with the merchant and a payment application on the user computing device; determining, by the computer, a merchant category of the merchant by:
identifying, by the computer, one of more products associated with the transaction based on an identification number associated with each of the one or more products in the transaction data;comparing, by the computer, the associated products with products associated with other merchants in a category database, the category database being stored on a data storage unit associated with the computer and accessed by the computer; anddetermining, by the computer, that the merchant is associated with the merchant category based on a similarity of the products associated with the merchant and the products associated with the other merchants associated with the merchant category in the category database; selecting, by the computer, a particular financial account of the financial accounts associated with the merchant category of the merchant with which to conduct the transaction; communicating, by the computer to the user computing device, the selected particular financial account; communicating, by the computer to the user computing device, instructions to initiate the payment application and to display the selected particular financial account via the payment application on the user computing device; and communicating, by the computer to the user computing device, instructions to transmit data associated with the selected particular financial account to the point of sale terminal associated with the merchant to conduct the transaction.