Electronic funds confirmation at point of transaction

Claim 1

A real-time point-of-transaction funds confirmation system wherein a draft is presented to a payee by a payor for later presentation by the payee or an agent of payee to a payor financial institution in exchange for good funds, the system comprising: an electronically-readable identification of an account on which the draft is drawn, the account being the eventual source of the good funds; an electronically-readable identification of the payor financial institution; reading means for reading the identification of the account and the identification of the payor financial institution from the draft and for generating a request record for verification of funds or guarantee of funds, said request record including the identification of the account, the identification of the payor financial institution, a transaction amount, and the request type; a network coupler which couples the reading means to a transaction network, wherein the transaction network carries said request record; a network for coupling a plurality of network couplers to a plurality of payor bank processors; a payor bank processor which reads said request record and reads account data from an account identified by the account identifier to verify availability of funds in the amount indicated by the transaction amount when the request type indicates the request record is for verification of funds; means for verifying availability of funds in the amount indicated by the transaction amount and for recording a hold on funds based on a payee bank funds guarantee policy when the request type indicates the request record is a funds guarantee request; and means for generating and sending a response record to the network coupler, in real-time, wherein the response record indicates whether the payor bank identifier and the account identifier are valid and whether sufficient funds to cover the transaction amount are available in the account.