Patent US 5,537,314

A credit accumulation and accessing system for a plurality of sponsoring companies and participants having at each sponsoring company location (14, 16), a common bus (26), which communicates with participant data input (28), performance data input (34), computer processing (24), memory (30), an award output device (36), and an input/output device (32). Input/output device (32) may connect to a central control center (12), and/or a plurality of second sponsoring companies (14, 16), and/or a plurality of financial institutions (94), through communication lines (38). Sponsoring company, participant, and performance data, along with award conversion tables, pyramidal association tables, award applicable merchandise UPC codes, financial-institution-issued lines of credit and computer operational programming, are stored. Under control of the operational program several tasks are accomplished accordingly, including, creating subdirectories for a single participant account so as to selectively associate the single account subdirectories with multiple sponsoring company accounts and deciphering such accordingly at points of sale, calculating, posting, and/or issuing discounts, raffle entries, store-credit returns, points, cash values, bill values, in accordance with performance of participants (72, 74), while sending results immediately and/or periodically to appropriate destinations, which may include computer memory and/or bank accounts and/or plastic cards on behalf of participants, participant sponsors in a pyramidal-type structure, sponsoring companies, sponsoring companies' sponsors in a pyramidal-type structure, raffle sponsors, and redeemed at appropriate locations which may include, sponsoring company, participant, beneficiary, or financial institution bank accounts (52, 54, 82, 84, 94), sponsoring company locations (14, 16), designated sponsoring company award output devices (36), participants' households, beneficiaries' locations, and cash dispensing machines, and received in the appropriate forms, which may include, designated sponsoring company merchandise, wire transfer, check, cash, coupon, certificate, charge card balance reductions, travel tour, or catalog merchandise.