Patent ID: 8595074

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a charge authorization computer, a first ISO/IEC compliant message from a point-of-service (POS) terminal, wherein the POS terminal includes POS hardware and POS software, wherein the POS hardware and the POS software have not been modified to accommodate processing transactions to at least one of activate stored value accounts or load stored value accounts, wherein stored valued accounts are associated with stored value cards, and wherein a seller is provided with a plurality of stored value cards, and a customer conducting a transaction with the seller acquires a stored value card from the seller; parsing, by the charge authorization computer, the first ISO/IEC 8583 compliant message to create a first parsed transaction request comprising a stored value account identifier associated with the stored value card, a first transaction amount, and a processing type code; determining, by the charge authorization computer, that the processing type code is associated with a request to apply a credit to a stored value account associated with the stored value account identifier; determining, by the charge authorization computer, that the stored value account identifier does not correspond to any stored value account identifier that is presently maintained by the charge authorization computer; inferring, by the charge authorization computer and in response to the determining that the stored value account identifier does not correspond to any stored value account identifier that is presently maintained by the charge authorization computer, that the request to apply the credit is a request to create a new first stored value account; creating, by the charge authorization computer, the new first stored value account; designating, by the charge authorization computer, the new first stored value account as corresponding to the stored value card; crediting, by the charge authorization computer, an amount to the new first stored value account; updating, by the charge authorization computer, the status of the stored value card from inactive to pending active; receiving, by the charge authorization computer and from a holder of the new first stored value account, information associated with the holder of the new first stored value account that cannot be transmitted to the charge authorization computer by way of the POS terminal; and activating, by the charge authorization computer, the new first stored value account in response to receiving the information associated with the holder of the new first stored value account.