Mastercard Loyalty Points Exchange System, Granted 21st Apr
Summary
The USPTO granted patent US12608723B2 to Mastercard Asia/Pacific Pte. Ltd. covering a method and system for exchanging loyalty points across multiple merchant loyalty programs. The patent describes a process for identifying user loyalty profiles, determining insufficient points for a transaction, and exchanging points from one merchant program to cover another merchant's transaction. This patent grant does not create compliance obligations for any party other than establishing exclusive legal rights for Mastercard.
What changed
The USPTO issued patent US12608723B2 to Mastercard Asia/Pacific Pte. Ltd. for a loyalty points exchange system. The patent covers a method for storing user loyalty profiles with merchant identifiers and point totals, receiving transaction requests, and exchanging loyalty points from one merchant program to cover transactions at a different merchant when the preferred merchant's points are insufficient. The patent contains 20 claims.
For affected parties, this patent grant gives Mastercard exclusive legal rights to this loyalty points exchange methodology in the United States. Competitors developing similar cross-merchant loyalty point exchange systems may need to design around this patent or seek licensing. The patent does not impose compliance or reporting obligations on any party—it is a legal instrument establishing intellectual property rights.
Archived snapshot
Apr 22, 2026GovPing captured this document from the original source. If the source has since changed or been removed, this is the text as it existed at that time.
Method and system of accessing data among a plurality of loyalty programs
Grant US12608723B2 Kind: B2 Apr 21, 2026
Assignee
MASTERCARD ASIA/PACIFIC PTE. LTD.
Inventors
Shi Ler Shila Chew, Donghao Huang, Gerald Ng, Ian Quek, Phuoc Hoang Long Le, Srinath Ravinathan, Than Htike Aung
Abstract
A method for exchanging loyalty points includes storing one or more user loyalty profiles including a user identifier and one or more merchant identifiers associated with a loyalty point total; receiving a transaction request from a computing system including at least a user identification, a merchant identification, and a transaction amount; identifying a user loyalty profile including a user identifier that matches the user identification; in response to identifying the user loyalty profile, determining the merchant identification matches one of the one or more merchant identifiers; determining the loyalty point total associated with the matching merchant identifier is lower than a loyalty point total required to cover the transaction amount; and exchanging a first amount of loyalty points associated with a different merchant identifier of the one or more merchant identifiers for a second amount of loyalty points associated with the merchant identifier that matched the merchant identification.
CPC Classifications
G06Q 30/0226 H04L 9/50 H04L 67/306
Filing Date
2024-03-04
Application No.
18594333
Claims
20
Mentioned entities
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