Patent ID: 8200545

Claim:
A computer-processor based method of payment for multi-vendor gift cards, comprising: (a) maintaining, by an e-commerce server, a database comprising records for merchandise and services for sale by a plurality of merchants; (b) enabling, by the e-commerce server, a gift card giver to interactively purchase a gift card for a specified amount of money for a gift card recipient and to provide method of payment information; (c) by the e-commerce server, electronically obtaining the specified amount of money using said method of payment information and transferring the specified amount of money into a card funding account that is used to pay for purchases by the gift card recipient; (d) enabling, by the e-commerce server, the gift card recipient to interactively select one or more items from the database, thereby generating an aggregated selection of items for each merchant; (e) issuing orders, by the e-commerce server, to each merchant in accordance with the aggregated selected items corresponding to each merchant; and (f) paying, by the e-commerce server, each merchant the amount of their respective order from the card funding account.