Systems and methods for dynamic transaction-payment routing

Abstract

A mobile payment transaction aggregator designed to identify, on a per transaction basis, a payment processor from a plurality of available payment processors with the lowest processing fee for the given transaction. Additionally, the aggregator may bundle multiple payment transactions of a single consumer across multiple merchants for additional savings.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 - 22 . (canceled) 
     
     
         23 . A method of settling a series of payment transactions between one or more consumers and one or more merchants by a payment-server computer comprising a processor, the method comprising:
 storing in a memory, by the payment-server computer, information received from a plurality of consumers and relating to financial accounts of the consumers;   transmitting, to a device of a first consumer over a telecommunication network, a first consumer token comprising information stored in the memory and corresponding to the first consumer;   receiving, by the payment-server computer from a first merchant device over a telecommunication network, a first payment-transaction authorization request for a purchase by the first consumer, the first authorization request comprising the first consumer token and a first transaction amount;   computationally determining a bundling factor for the first payment transaction based on at least one transaction attribute for the first payment transaction and at least one attribute of the first consumer from the consumer information stored in the memory;   suspending processing of the first authorization request if the bundling factor is below a predetermined threshold;   transmitting, to the merchant device over a telecommunication network, an authorization for the first payment transaction in response to the first authorization request;   receiving, by the payment-server computer from a second merchant device over a telecommunication network, a second payment-transaction authorization request for a purchase by the first consumer, the second authorization request comprising the first consumer token and a second transaction amount; and   completing the payment transactions by transmitting an authorization request to a payment processor server over a telecommunication network using information stored in the memory and identifying the financial account of the first consumer and the aggregated amount of the first and second transactions.   
     
     
         24 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the first consumer token is a QR code and is communicated to a merchant device by optical scanning thereof. 
     
     
         25 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the first consumer token is an email address. 
     
     
         26 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein at least one of the merchant devices is a web server. 
     
     
         27 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the first and second merchant devices are devices of unaffiliated merchants. 
     
     
         28 . The method of  claim 24 , wherein the first consumer token is encoded with data identifying a financial account of the first consumer. 
     
     
         29 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the at least one consumer attribute comprises a type of payment instrument provided to the server by the consumer. 
     
     
         30 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the at least one consumer attribute comprises information relating to prior transactions by said consumer. 
     
     
         31 . The method of  claim 23 , wherein the at least one transaction attribute comprises one or more of a purchase type, a merchant type, a time of the authorization request, or an amount of the authorization request. 
     
     
         32 . The method of  claim 23 , further comprising:
 prior to transmitting the authorization request to the payment processor, computationally determining a transaction bundling savings for each of a plurality of payment processors based on at least one transaction attribute of the first transaction; and   if the determined savings is below a predetermined amount, processing the first authorization request prior to receiving the second authorization request.   
     
     
         33 . The method of  claim 23 , further comprising determining a financial risk level for the first consumer by computationally analyzing a stored transaction history and suspending processing only if the risk level is determined to be acceptable. 
     
     
         34 . The method of  claim 23 , further comprising:
 analyzing processing fees charged by each of a plurality of payment processors based upon at least one transaction attribute for each of the first transaction and the second transaction; and   selecting a payment processor for the transmitting step based on the processing fees.