Dual card

Abstract

A dual card, which facilitates payment for goods or services from either a credit account or a stored value account, operates on both an open network and a closed network. The dual card is a payment card that integrates the ability to provide credit privileges and stored value privileges to a cardholder of the dual card. The features, benefits, and advantages of a stored value card are integrated with the credit card aspects of the dual card. The benefits, features, and advantages of a credit card are integrated with a stored value card.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method for merging dual cards, wherein each dual card is associated with a credit account maintained by a financial institution and a stored value account maintained by a sponsor, the computer-implemented method comprising:
 receiving multiple dual card numbers to be merged via a Web page, wherein each dual card number falls within a numerical range that distinguishes a dual card associated with the dual card number from a credit card and a stored value card; and   merging the stored value accounts associated with the dual cards for which dual card numbers were received into one stored value account maintained by the sponsor.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising submitting by a dual card support center the received multiple dual card numbers to a stored value processor. 
     
     
         3 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising instructing the stored value processor to merge the stored value accounts into one stored value account.