Patent ID: 8485441

Claim:
A method of providing personalized prepaid gift cards, the method comprising: activating, by one or more processors, a chit redeemable for a prepaid card responsive to receipt of an activation message associated with an indication that a chit has been purchased by a purchaser at a merchant location, the activation message including a chit identifier and as chit value, associated with the purchased chit, the chit comprises an identification mechanism representing a financial commitment to issue one of a plurality of prepaid cards in an amount associated with the purchased chit value; receiving, by one or more processors, responsive to activation of the chit, the chit identifier from a remote user device operated by a user when the user attempts to redeem the chit to obtain the prepaid card; validating, by one or more processors, the chit identifier received from the user responsive to data indicative of activation; seeding a prepaid card with the a card value corresponding to the chit value such that the prepaid card is redeemable at the merchant for the card value; sending, by one or more processors to the remote user device, user-selectable design options by which the user configures the appearance of the prepaid card; receiving, by one or more processors, user-selected design options from the remote user device; causing the prepaid card to have an appearance in accordance with the received user-selected design options; and providing the configured appearance card to the user, the card being a physical card operable to be used to facilitate a financial transaction at least at the merchant location, the chit comprises an identification mechanism representing a financial commitment to issue one of a plurality of prepaid cards in an amount associated with the purchased chit value.