Abstract: A consumer may make an electronic bill payment from his financial institution account to an intermediary for a certain amount. Data related to the bill payment transaction may be sent to a facilitation server associated with the intermediary. This data may be filtered to determine whether or not the data represents a valid bill payment transaction. If it does, an intermediate account provided by the intermediary, or an account of a third party (such as an on-line merchant) may be immediately credited with the amount of the bill payment so that the consumer can immediately use those funds in an on-line purchase.

Abstract: A consumer may make an electronic bill payment from his financial institution account to an intermediary for a certain amount. Data related to the bill payment transaction may be sent to a facilitation server associated with the intermediary. This data may be filtered to determine whether or not the data represents a valid bill payment transaction. If it does, an intermediate account provided by the intermediary, or an account of a third party (such as an on-line merchant) may be immediately credited with the amount of the bill payment so that the consumer can immediately use those funds in an on-line purchase.