US Patent Issued to The Clearing House Payments on Sept. 1 for "Secure payment processing" (North Carolina, Wisconsin Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,725,156, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC (New York).

"Secure payment processing" was invented by David Fortney (Winston-Salem, N.C.) and Michael Meinolf (Mequon, Wis.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for secure payment processing are disclosed. An issuer vault generates payment items, which correspond to consumer account information and which replicate the structure of the account information but do not include consumers' actual account number. The payment items, rather than the actual account information, are communicated to on-line and mobile payment services for use by consumers...