Billing system and method for micro-transactions

Abstract

Billing a customer through an intermediary billing system for a transaction by receiving, at the intermediary billing system, a transaction request associated with a transaction amount and a customer identification code, validating, in the intermediary billing system, the transaction request by determining whether the customer identification code corresponds to a customer that is registered with the intermediary billing system, and sending, in the case that the transaction request is valid, a billing event trigger associated with the customer identification code to an external billing mechanism, the billing event trigger representing the transaction amount.

1 . A method for billing a customer for a transaction between the customer and a third party provider, the method including:
 a registration request receipt step of receiving, at the intermediary billing system, a registration request to register the customer;   a customer registration step of registering the customer in the intermediary billing system by providing a mobile phone number of the customer to the intermediary billing system, assigning a customer identification code to the customer, the customer identification code being shared with the third party provider, and associating the mobile phone number of the customer with the customer identification code assigned to the customer;   a billing request receipt step of receiving, at the intermediary billing system, a billing request from the third party provider, the billing request including a product identification code corresponding to a product associated with the transaction between the customer and the third party provider, a customer identification code assigned to the customer and a provider identification code corresponding to the third party provider;   a billing validation step of validating, in the intermediary billing system, the billing request by determining whether the customer identification code corresponds to a customer that is registered with the intermediary billing system, and by determining whether the provider identification code corresponds to a valid third party provider; and   a billing step of sending, in the case that the billing request is validated, at least one billable message from the intermediary billing system to a mobile phone number associated with the customer identification code, the at least one message representing a billing value that corresponds to the product identification code.