Patent ID: 8715066

Claim:
An electronic fund transfer system for managing and transferring electronic funds from a user's financial account to a credit system for use with a gaming device comprising: a gaming device; a credit system configured to dispense credit directly to the gaming device via physical or electronic credit means, wherein said gaming device is configured to receive said physical or electronic credit means for gaming purposes; an electronic fund transfer (EFT) device comprising a secure client-side application for receiving instructions from a user for transferring electronic funds from the user's financial account to the credit system and means for transmitting the fund transfer instructions to the user's financial account, wherein the EFT comprises a handheld mobile communication device; a secure payment gateway configured to connect to the user's financial accounts via a financial asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network; a host system connected to the credit system via a local network; a funds management portal connected to the host system and the secure payment gateway and wherein the funds management portal is configured to receive the transferred electronic funds from the user's financial accounts and to account and reconcile the transferred electronic funds, and to send instructions to said host system for issuing said physical or electronic credit means and wherein said host system transmits said instructions for issuing said physical or electronic credit means to said credit system and wherein all communications between the secure payment gateway and the host system pass through the funds management portal; means for transferring electronic funds from the user's financial account to the funds management portal via the secure payment gateway; and wherein said EFT device is configured to connect to the secure payment gateway and to communicate with the user's financial account and to transmit the instructions for transferring electronic funds from the user's financial account to the funds management portal via the secure payment gateway; and wherein said funds management portal comprises a database with encrypted data for each electronic fund transaction and said encrypted data comprise an EFT device ID.