Payment Network with Multiple Vendor Participation Levels

摘要

A system makes payments from a community of payers to a community of vendors, assesses a transaction fee to the vendor on each payment, and provides a level of service to each vendor based on aggregate transaction fees. The system determines a transaction fee for each payment by looking up a fee rate applicable to payments from the payer to the vendor and multiplying the payment amount by the fee rate. Each vendor is assigned to a service tier based on aggregate transaction fees charged over a period of time. If the aggregate transaction fee is lower than a threshold, the vendor is assigned to tier one. If the aggregate transaction fee is greater then the threshold and less than a second threshold, the vendor is assigned to tier two. If the aggregate transaction fee is greater than the second threshold, the vendor is assigned to tier three.