"The first online payment gateway processed in 1994 AssuredCard annual payments, online in-house with internet enabled by 1996. AssuredCredit developed on-premise merchant and hosted versions from 1997 to 1999. After filing a patent for a online merchant payment gateway in March 2000 we re-engineered the backend for Universal ASPConnect Connect with updated miPay, miCRM, miBilling, miStore and miCommerce modules and applications... Maynard L. Dokken"

When AssuredCard was delivering solutions for financial payment stress caused by lack of options including for late or over the limit fees. The AssuredCredit team was mandated the task of building an online portal for customer applications, payment requests and services access to expand the reach and audience. AssuredCredit developed the foundations for the updated hosted online payment gateway and hosted ecommerce payment platform.

AssuredCredit used Visual Studio 6.0 to convert the 1994 versions of miBilling and miCRM from AssuredCard operations. This included the preparation for the 1996 internet version. The product was expanded and integrated into the Milinx miCommerce Suite released late 2000. The system was re-engineered to the scalable Hosted Payment Gateway of Milinx using AssuredCredit models and protocol.

We knew we were first. We had been watching all the players including PayPal and the predecessor Confinity. We knew they were going in a different direction. They were focusing on an App versus a Universal Online Payment Gateway for Merchants. We were the leaders and determined to remain.

We were busy merging into the new Milinx market entity, regardless we put a team together to file a patent to cement our place as the first Universal Customer Centric Secure Payment Gateway. A basic outline is below and gives you the direction and focus of AssuredCredit, CreditFinancial and Milinx.

PayPal acquisition by eBay in 2002 only confirmed that it was a peer to peer transaction based app versus a merchant based gateway.

Patent Abstract "Patent Link"

There is provided an e-commerce business model and method in which confidential financial and identification information is registered with and managed by an on-line intermediary which acts as an intermediary between a consumer, a merchant and a financial institution to quickly complete an electronic transaction without disclosing the consumer's personal financial information to the merchant.

Client-Centered Secure E-Commerce

Technical Field of Technology & Patent
This invention relates to electronic commerce transactions. In particular this invention relates to the provision of a secure means of transacting purchases of goods and services without requiring disclosure of a purchaser's confidential personal financial information to merchants.

Background of Patent
Retail transactions are increasingly conducted electronically over the Internet. Such transactions generally require direct payment by the consumer to the merchant using a credit card or debit card payment method. The transfer of confidential financial information to a variety of merchants through such transactions presents a risk of theft and fraudulent use of the information. Such a risk is potentially financially harmful to the consumer whose information is mis-used, and the possibility of such theft or fraud discourages consumers from engaging in electronic transactions, thereby limiting the potential of e-commerce.

The client-centered secure E-commerce business model process of the present application is designed to enable a client to make a purchase from a merchant without having to transfer any personal banking information to the merchant. The invention will assist in preventing commerce transaction fraud by placing transactions entirely in the hands of authenticated clients and their banks. By providing a higher standard of security for all parties involved in a transaction, the invention will benefit merchants, financial institutions and purchasers.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a business model and method which will enable secure e-commerce transactions.

It is a further object of this invention to provide such a business model and method in which confidential financial and identification information is registered with and managed by an on-line intermediary which acts as an intermediary between a consumer, merchants and financial institutions to quickly complete a transaction without disclosing the consumer's personal financial information to the merchant.
These ~ and further objects of the invention will be appreciated by reference to the summary of the invention and to the detailed description of the preferred and alternative embodiments which follow.

The challenge was to create an application that was universal for all web portals and browsers which was Netscape in 1997. A Universal Online Payment Gateway with Financial Institution Registration. First was to develop a User Interface with Netscape used Crossware for on-demand applications that ran across networks and operating systems, and based on open Internet standards of HTML, Java, and JavaScript. It was the obvious choice for testing.

Next we needed a site to test the Online Payment Gateway through a Web Portal so Asssured Card Corporation registered two domains for this purpose, AssuredCard.com (now AssuredCard.co) then AssuredCredit.com (now AssuredCredit.co) for testing the Web Portal and Online Payment Gateway. We used two servers with different operating systems and network layers being Linux with Novell and Microsoft with NT. One of the largest banks in the country came to see our security backend to confirm we could protect out customers information. Interestingly after the review we had a better backend and our customer information was less accessible then their customers.

A basic online payment system was setup within the Web Portal Gateway using the development library for enterprise customers. Our parent Milinx later recruited from the Netscape family of companies to assist in building the application layer for ASP services. The backend used a Java Centric library called Common Object Request Broker Architecture “COBRA” which allowed Milinx to transition the framework to the Microsystems Servers and Oracle Data and Javabeans Engine to the Data Center ASP Model.

Javabeans was open source and played a critical role in the successes of not only AssuredCredit also Milinx. This integration of the Oracle COBRA framework allowed for seamless transfer of this online HTML Javascript gateway to Milinx and CreditAssure Financial.

We had built all the pieces for this to work in the real world. Now we needed to make sure it was Secure in the existing internet and ready for ASP architecture. The next step, Secure Gateway developed to work with any Web Portal Gateway or Browser backend.