| 摘要 |
A method and apparatus is provided for constructing and using a smart wallet, i.e. a repository of payment instruments, such as, for example, credit cards, with automatic selection when making a purchase in an online environment. In one embodiment of the invention, the wallet service first finds the intersection of acceptable instruments between a merchant and a user. For example, the invention matches a list of user held credit cards against a list of acceptable credit cards at a merchant. The wallet service then intelligently selects, or at least ranks in order, the payment instruments based on value to the customer. The ranking can take into account: a) cash back rates; b) mileage rates for the specific potential purchase; and c) temporal discounts such as shipping or coupon discounts for the specific product type; etc. The act of automatically making a selection of a payment instrument, such as a credit card, in an online environment is analogous to what a human does when buying things at a store. The advantage is that an automatic system can integrate all the discount notices and coupons that are typically mailed to a cardholder. The system preferably presumes that a smart wallet is given information about a transaction, and has collected information about the payment instruments. |
