Patent ID: 8651375
Filing Date: 2014-02-18
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A system comprising: a referral card program comprising a referral card issued by an issuing entity on behalf of a merchant having machine-readable account information stored thereon identifying account information for at least said merchant, a first referring entity authorized by said issuing entity to initially distribute said card, a second referring entity authorized by said first referring entity to obtain valuable benefits from said issuing entity in a manner predetermined by the issuing entity in exchange for taking action predetermined by said issuing entity and/or to further distribute said card to at least one additional referring entity in exchange for other benefits, the card being configurable to contain an undisclosed value that can only be determined by a holder of the card at the time of a purchase at said merchant, the manner of payment of benefits by the issuing entity being determined such that the card never has a zero balance of available benefits; a referral acceptor; a referral coordinator coupled to the referral acceptor; a referral calculator coupled to the referral coordinator and an input/output (I/O) device coupled to the referral coordinator, wherein the referral acceptor is configured to accept said referral card, wherein the referral card has a referrer identifier that identifies each referrer of the holder of the referral card.