Patent ID: 8751376

Claim:
In a system that includes a financial instrument, the financial instrument tied to a single financial account comprising a credit portion and a prepaid portion that may be accessed by an account holder in a financial transaction, a method for processing the financial transaction, the method comprising: funding the financial account with a cash balance provided by the account holder, an amount of the cash balance comprising the prepaid portion of the financial account; providing the financial instrument enabling the account holder to access the credit portion and the prepaid portion of the financial account, the credit portion linked to the prepaid portion in a single physical storage media; receiving at a computing system a purchase authorization for the financial transaction initiated by the account holder, the purchase authorization comprising a purchase amount and an identifier for the financial account; determining at the computing system an available balance of the credit portion of the financial account; if the purchase amount exceeds the available balance of the credit portion, funding the financial transaction with an amount less than or equal to the available balance of the credit portion; funding a remaining portion of the purchase amount with the prepaid portion of the financial account; receiving a prepaid cash deposit from an account holder; and applying the prepaid cash deposit to the prepaid cash balance portion until the prepaid cash balance satisfies a minimum amount and any amount of the prepaid cash deposit not applied to the prepaid cash balance is applied to at least partially pay an amount of the credit limit that has been used by the account holder.