Patent ID: 8175924

Claim:
A method of validating and activating a purchase card, comprising: providing a purchase card that is removably attached to a card carrier, wherein the purchase card has an account identifier associated therewith and has a card indicium affixed thereto, wherein the purchase card includes a machine-readable information encoding region into which the account identifier is encoded, and wherein the card carrier has a carrier indicium affixed thereto; populating a database with a stored card indicium that relates to the card indicium, a stored carrier indicium that relates to the carrier indicium, and a stored account identifier that relates to the account identifier, thereby uniquely coupling the account identifier to the card indicium; at a point-of-sale device and in response to a customer request to purchase the purchase card, entering information from the card indicium into the point-of-sale device; at the point-of-sale device, entering information from the carrier indicium into the point-of-sale device; comparing the information from the card indicium and the information from the carrier indicium with the stored card indicium and the stored carrier indicium; and based at least in part on the comparing step, activating the card by associating value to it.