| 摘要 |
<p>A third-party billing system and method permits consumers to conduct e-commerce transactions including microtransactions securely and anonymously by providing billing and personal information to the third party billing system rather than to merchants. A consumer initiates a transaction by placing an order for a product. The consumer (204) then authorizes the transaction by transmitting an authorization code to a billing computer (218). The authorization code identifies the consumer billing account to which the transaction is to be charged. The authorization code can also authenticate the consumer through a PIN. Multiple consumers can charge transactions to one billing account in which case each consumer can be assigned a different PIN with restrictions that limit that consumer's use of the account. The billing computer (218) then verifies the authorization code and transmits an approval code to the merchant computer (208). Consumer (204) has an associated consumer identifier (206) that uniquely identifies the consumer while the consumer interacts with computer network (202) and is independent from the consuner's billing information that is provided to consumer billing authority (240).</p> |
