This financial services organization functions as a support network for many large retail establishments. The process this organization had in place to handle disputed charges is an example of an extremely expensive business exception. When a retail customer disputed a transaction, the financial services organization would manually print all transactions and send them through ground mail to the customer to identify which transactions were being challenged. The customer would then have to sign these papers and send them back through ground mail to the financial services organization, which would then package them and send selected documents to the retail institution. After this paperwork was received, the retail institution would decide whether the charge should be removed. This process could take up to 20 days to complete and typically cost the organizations involved between $400 and $700 per transaction.

Because security was such an enormous concern, any new solution had to help ensure the integrity of the financial services organization's core transaction system. Protection of customer data was essential, so this financial services organization wanted to maintain only one access point to its transaction system. In the past, the organization had not been comfortable with integrating this system with its retail partners because it would have required a unique, point-to-point connection for each partner. Maintaining these point-to-point connections would have been cost-prohibitive and would have most likely resulted in a higher than acceptable error rate. The financial services organization would only allow partners to communicate with its transaction system if it was possible for all of them to share the same connection - reducing the financial service's organizations security and maintenance responsibilities to a single connection. SOA turned this potential obstacle into an opportunity.

To create a solution, the financial services organization deployed a service in front of its core transaction system that now allows retail partners to transmit dispute claims to the financial services organization on behalf of the partners' retail customers. To register a dispute, customers now simply log into the retail institution's Website and view a list of transactions that have posted to their account. Customers can then select the transactions they wish to dispute. The Website sends this request to the financial services organization's transaction-dispute service. The authentication that customers provide while logging on to the Web site enables the financial services organization to eliminate the need for paper documentation with a handwritten signature. Today, the transaction-dispute process averages a total of three hours, reduced from 20 days, and costs only US $40 to $70 per transaction, instead of the previous $400-$700 per transaction, representing a 90 percent reduction in costs.