Blonder, GregGreenspan, Steven LloydMirville, J RobertSugla, Binay2019-07-092019-07-091998-01-131995-05-31Greg Blonder, Steven Lloyd Greenspan, J Robert Mirville, Binay Sugla. "Transaction authorization and alert system." U.S. Patent 5,708,422-A.US-5708422-Ahttps://hdl.handle.net/2144/36284An automated method for alerting a customer that a transaction is being initiated and for authorizing the transaction based on a confirmation/approval by the customer thereto. In accordance with one illustrative embodiment, a request to authorize the transaction is received, wherein the request includes a customer identifier; a determination is made whether to authorize the transaction based on the customer identifier; if the determination is to authorize the transaction, that fact is communicated to the customer; a confirmation that the transaction should, in fact, be authorized is received back from the customer; and the transaction is authorized in response to the customer's confirmation thereof. In accordance with another illustrative embodiment, a transaction initiated by an agent of the customer (i.e., the principal) is authorized by the principal when one or more threshold parameters that may be pre-defined by the principal are exceeded. A preferred method of alerting the customer and receiving a confirmation to authorize the transaction back from the customer is illustratively afforded by conventional two-way pagers.Patent421307