Importance

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Abstract

An intelligent network-based e-commerce system 100 computes costs and bills customers for rated transactions based on service type and/or content. A gateway device such as a gateway server 104 or short message service center (SMSC) 404 receives costing/billing requests (or 'rated debit requests') and forwards the requests to one or more service control points (SCPs) 122. The SCPs maintain subscriber accounts for one or more subscribers and maintain a tariff table having cost/rate information associated with one or more services. Upon receiving the costing/billing request, an SCP consults the tariff table to determine the cost/rate information corresponding to the service type and/or content identified in the rated debit request and computes the cost of the service based on the rate information. In one embodiment, the SCP further determines an eligibility of the subscriber account to be billed for the service (i.e., authorization for the service, sufficiency of account balance and allowance of overcharges) and, in response to a positive determination of eligibility, debits the cost of the service from the subscriber account.

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First Claim