Unlike the prevalent paradigm for electronic payments where merchants own, orchestrate, and drive the payment process, embodiments of this invention enable customers to pay for products and services from their personal computers or mobile devices without involving the merchant in the payment process. Merchants place their payment requests into a payment bus and customers fulfill these requests in any way they please—from any device, at any time, through any payment service. We refer to the payment paradigm described here as Payer-Centric Payments (PCP) as opposed to Merchant-Centric Payments (MCP) that is commonplace today. This invention is applicable for physical, online, and vending machine payments and provides significant benefits to both customers and merchants.