Patent ID: 8620739

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for a merchant to dynamically use non-monetary loyalty rewards of a distinct organization to facilitate provision of items from the merchant, the method comprising: receiving in a computing system of a merchant an indication to use with the merchant a specified non-monetary loyalty reward of an organization distinct from the merchant, the indication being received from a distinct computing system of the organization to initiate dynamic creation by the merchant of a gift certificate associated with the merchant that corresponds to the specified non-monetary loyalty reward, and the specified non-monetary loyalty reward being associated with a user affiliated with the organization; automatically determining a monetary value for the merchant to associate with the specified loyalty reward; in response to the received indication and under control of a computing system of the merchant, dynamically enabling use of the determined monetary value for acquiring items from the merchant, the dynamic enabling including dynamically creating the gift certificate to have a specified monetary amount based on the determined monetary value; and providing an indication of the dynamically created gift certificate to enable use of the dynamically created gift certificate; and after receiving an instruction from the computing system of the organization to use the created gift certificate as part of acquiring one or more indicated items from the merchant for the user, applying at least a portion of the specified monetary amount from the created gift certificate to reduce a price for the acquiring of the one or more indicated items from the merchant.