Patent ID: 8165635

Claim:
A method for over the air (OTA) provisioning a soft card on a device having wireless communications capabilities, the method comprising: (a) instantiating a soft card provisioning application on a device with wireless communications capabilities; (b) obtain a card number for a soft card desired to be provisioned on the device; (c) communicating an issuer identification number (IIN) retrieved from the card number to a provisioning configuration server over an air interface; (d) receiving a provisioning issuer server network address from the provisioning configuration server based on the issuer identification number; (e) connecting to and receiving at least one card-issuer-specific challenge question from provisioning issuer server; (f) presenting the at least one challenge question to a user of the device and receiving at least one response to the at least one challenge question; (g) communicating the at least one response to the provisioning issuer server; and (h) receiving, over the air interface, card image data and soft card personalization data including personalized embossed and pre-printed data from the provisioning issuer server and, in response to successful receipt of the data sent over the air interface, provisioning the soft card for the use on the device with wireless communication capabilities based on the data received over the air interface.