Patent ID: 8429009

Claim:
A method for providing to customers universal access to affinity systems of a plurality of merchants, wherein each merchant is able to operate its own affinity system without sharing information about transactions between the merchant and said customers, the method comprising, at a universal management server: receiving requests from said customers, each request from a customer comprising a request to activate a respective universal identifier issued to the customer, and in response to each such request: allocating memory on the universal management server, the allocated memory defining a personal account locker for the customer, and automatically enrolling the customer in the affinity systems of one or more merchants using the same universal identifier of the customer to enroll the customer in each merchant affinity system, and thereafter; receiving from one of said merchants a targeted discount offer and the universal identifier corresponding to each customer in a set of targeted customers who are enrolled in the affinity system of that merchant and in response; storing the targeted discount offer in the personal account lockers of each customer in the set of targeted customers.