Patent ID: 7668619

Claim:
A method of customizing a gift card comprising: storing a plurality of design templates in a computer-readable medium, the templates including a plurality of fields and a layout for the plurality of fields; displaying a set of contract stores and a set of the plurality of design templates to a customer, wherein selection of a contract store also selects a rule set specific to the selected contract store, and wherein at least one template field of at least a portion of the plurality of design templates is modifiable by a customer based on the rule set; receiving a set of inputs from a customer including the contract store selection, a design template selection, and a gift card amount, wherein the gift card amount corresponds to a payment received from the customer by a vendor; printing the gift card based on the selected design template and the contract store selection; and activating the gift card for redemption exclusively at the selected contract store in an amount corresponding to the gift card amount.