Patent ID: 7818423

Claim:
A method of accessing personal account information of a credit card associated with a user over a global communication packet-switched network, comprising the steps of: at a user location disposed on the network, resolving a machine-resolvable code (MRC) having a representation of the coded information contained therein and disposed on the credit card of the user, the representation of the coded information having no personal information contained therein relating to the user and no routing information over a network; extracting the representation of the coded information from the MRC, the representation of the coded information associated with routing information that is associated with both the personal account information of the user and a specific and unique credit card company server having stored thereat the personal account information of the user, which routing information, personal account information and credit card server information are not stored on the credit card; in response to the steps of resolving and extracting, obtaining the routing information to the credit card server associated with the extracted representation of the coded information; connecting the user location to the specific and unique credit card company server across the network over a determined route in accordance with the obtained routing information; transmitting the extracted representation of the coded information to the specific and unique credit card company server over the determined route during the step of connecting; using the transmitted representation of the coded information at the specific and unique credit card company server to determine the personal account information associated with the extracted representation of the coded information such that the representation of the coded information is used for and has a unique association with both obtaining routing information to the unique credit card server and for determining the personal account information; returning the determined personal account information from the specific and unique credit card company server to the user location; and presenting the determined personal account information to the user at the user location.