Patent ID: 8346665

Claim:
A system, operating in conjunction with a financial account of an issuing institution having at least one card associated therewith for accessing funds in the financial account, the system requiring joint activation of usage of the at least one card by at least two cardholders associated therewith, the system comprising: a computational processing unit for data processing and execution of stored instructions; and associated with the processing unit, memory for storing computer-readable instructions executable by the processing-unit, the instructions, when executed by the processing unit, implementing (i) an event-detection module for detecting a first activation event, related to the at least one card, received from one of a plurality of cardholders associated with the financial account; (ii) a messaging module for transmitting, based on and in response to the detection of the first activation event, a request-for-activation message to the other cardholders associated with the financial account; and (iii) the event-detection module subsequently detecting, from each of the other cardholders associated with the financial account, a subsequent activation event; wherein the at least one card cannot be used by any of the cardholders until all of the cardholders have activated the at least one card in accordance with step (iii), and wherein the at least one card is authorized to be used by each cardholder once all of the cardholders have activated the at least one card.