Abstract: The platform supports a wide variety of merchants who are interested in a loyalty and/or value card products. The platform is an integrated set of software packages and tools that allows merchants to develop and offer loyalty award and payment products. The platform consists of a series of sub-systems that form the operating environment for the loyalty and payment products, collectively called common systems herein. These systems work together to customize and orchestrate product functionality. The platform processes real-time messages from devices, such as point-of-sale and CRIND/ICR/ICR (gas pump) devices, that are modified to work with the platform. The platform responds to the messages from the devices with a range of actions from approval of the pending purchase to addition of loyalty points into an account. In the case of the system-based service, messages are formatted according to defined standards so that they can be received by the platform.