Patent ID: 8671051

Claim:
A method for a financial institution to facilitate the purchase of an automobile by an applicant of a loan, comprising: opening a financial account upon approval of an application for the loan by an applicant to purchase an automobile, the loan having an approved amount therefor, and financial account information being stored in a database; depositing an amount of money into the financial account, based upon the approved amount of the loan; issuing an inactive loan card to the applicant, wherein the loan card is associated with the financial account information stored in the database and is selectively activatable; receiving a request at a computing device to activate the loan card, wherein the request comprises verifiable vehicle identification information for the automobile desired to be purchased by the applicant and verifiable information related to the applicant; in response to receiving the verifiable vehicle identification information for the automobile desired to be purchased by the applicant, activating the loan card by the computing device upon verifying the vehicle identification information and verifying the applicant information is from an approved applicant; receiving a notification from a credit card processing network that a merchant has commenced a transaction using the loan card at a certain amount of money; and in response to receiving the notification from the credit card processing network: disbursing the certain amount of money to a bank associated with the merchant; closing the financial account; and deactivating the loan card.