Patent ID: 8533108

Claim:
An improved computerized method for providing credit card services by a card issuer, such method being of the type employing computerized processing of a stream of incoming merchant charges to be posted and stored as debits to a cardholder's account and to generate a bill of the posted charges on a periodic basis to the cardholder, wherein the improvement operates in connection with continuing education offered to a constituent of an organization, the constituent having an account with the card issuer, and the improvement comprises: storing in a first database on a first computer, in association with the account, data associated with a provider's course that is at least one of (i) approved and (ii) potentially approvable by the organization for enrollment by the constituent; processing with a processor in the computer incoming merchant charges received over a network, said charges to be posted to the account, to flag any charge identified as pertaining to the approved course by the associated data and to store such charge as flagged; conditioning settlement of such flagged charge on receiving authorization from the organization to implement settlement thereof, such authorization being evidence of satisfaction by the constituent of a requirement by the organization in relation to the course; deferring billing of any flagged charge with the processor in the computer, pending settlement of such flagged charge under an arrangement with the organization, such settlement comprising using a settlement computer process and crediting of the account of the constituent with an amount corresponding to such flagged charge, and the billing of the flagged charge using a billing computer process in the computer to cause billing of the amount of such flagged charge to the constituent, providing to the constituent a reward system under which identified goods or services are made available without additional charge, conditioned, however, on existence of at least one flagged charge in the account, such providing including: on storing a charge as flagged, crediting an associated reward account; and appropriately debiting the associated reward account on its use for the any of the identified goods or services; in a second billing computer process, issuing a bill to the organization for each flagged charge, and debiting an account of the organization for an amount billed to the organization; receiving from the organization payment of the bill to the organization, and, upon the settlement, crediting the account of the organization for such payment, such payment giving rise to the crediting of the account of the constituent; wherein processing incoming merchant charges to be posted to the account to flag any charge identified as pertaining to the approved course further includes determining whether any such charge includes a portion that is not subject to funding, and in such case: flagging only an amount of such charge excluding the portion; and separately processing the portion.