Patent ID: 7620567

Claim:
A method for operating a loyalty program integrated with a financial infrastructure, the method comprising: receiving, at a loyalty host system, a transaction instruction initiated by a customer at a merchant point-of-sale device disposed at a merchant point of sale; determining, with the loyalty host system, whether the customer and merchant are participants in the loyalty program; executing, with the loyalty host system, a loyalty process in accordance with the loyalty program if the customer and merchant are participants, wherein the loyalty process includes augmenting a stored point total for the customer by an augmentation amount in accordance with the application of administration criteria to the transaction instruction; transmitting, with the loyalty host system, the transaction instruction to the financial infrastructure with a request for approval of the transaction instruction; receiving, with the loyalty host system, a denial of the transaction instruction from the financial infrastructure; backing out of the loyalty process, with the loyalty host system, by decrementing the stored point total for the customer by the augmentation amount after receiving the denial of the transaction instruction; and transmitting, with the loyalty host system, the denial of the transaction instruction to the merchant point-of-sale device.