Methods and credit or debit card systems are disclosed that allow the available credit to be determined by someone other than the card issuer and that allow a limit to be set on the number of expenditures that can be made. The methods and systems can be used to provide a mechanism for supervising credit or debit card usage. Methods and systems are disclosed which include a child's credit card account linked to a parent's credit or debit card account. The parent may change the child's available credit without changing the total combined available credit for the child's and the parent's accounts. In addition, an expenditure counter figure associated with the child's account is disclosed which can be used by the parent to enable the child to make an unlimited number of purchases, a limited number of purchases, or no purchases. The parent may make a single payment for both the child's and the parent's credit card accounts. The methods and systems disclosed may be used outside of the parent/child context whenever supervision is required. They may also be used by a single individual to provide limited credit card usage in less secure environments.

A system and method of implementing a secure purchase management system wherein a unique account code is assigned to a purchaser; a set of secret transaction codes are provided to the purchaser, one secret transaction code to be used for each individual purchase to be made by the purchaser; and each purchase request from a purchaser is verified to make sure it includes the purchaser's account code and a transaction code which has not been used before to thereby prevent unauthorized purchases and fraud.

A system and method automatically enters financial transactions such as credit card transactions into a financial account stored in a computer. A financial statement incorporating the transactions is provided in an electronic form understood by the computer, such as a computer data file, for updating the financial account. For a credit card account, the electronic statement includes one or more credit card transactions such as purchases. Before accepting the electronic statement, the process verifies that the electronic form of the statement has not been altered since its creation and therefore correctly reflects transactions in the original statement. In the process of entering the transactions, they are tracked by automatically assigning them to expense categories. First the process determines from the electronic statement if a payee for a transaction is of record in the computer and, if so, assigns the transaction to a category already associated with the payee. If not, the process next determines from the electronic statement a merchant category code such as a Standard Industry Code (SIC). The merchant category code is associated with a category recognized by the computer, and the transaction is assigned to the recognized category. If no recognized category exists, the process prompts the user for a category to which the transaction can be assigned.

A data-processing method by which one or more prepaid satellite spending cards are configured and linked to a cardholder's host credit card or card account such that a predetermined available spending capacity of each satellite card is selectively determined by the cardholder of the host credit card, is deducted from the available balance of the host card or card account and limits the total spending capacity of the satellite card. The main cardholder may also remotely selectively increase the available spending capacity of the one or more satellite cards by deducting the desired additional spending capacity of each satellite card from the available balance of the host credit card as a purchase against the host card account.

A program operating apparatus comprises a body unit and a memory unit, attachable to and detachable from the body unit, for storing an application program. The memory unit stores sales area data indicating sales areas of the memory unit. The body unit stores sales area data indicating sales areas of the body unit. When executing software of the memory unit, there are checked the sales area data of this memory unit and the sales area data of the body unit. Thus, the memory unit sold in areas exclusive of the sales areas of the body unit is prevented from operating on that body unit. Similarly, the body unit sold in areas exclusive of the sales areas of the memory unit prevents an execution of the memory unit.