Abstract: The present invention is in the field of coupon management and redemption for customers at the point of sale. The goal of the present invention is to provide a streamlined and automated way to determine the best award according to business logic or rules as chosen to apply by a cashier or customer available to a customer at a point of sale based upon the coupons and/or discounts available to the customer that either the customer presents or that the customer has uniquely associated with their customer identifier on a processing server.

Abstract: The invention is related to generation of an unpredictable subsequent coupon number. The numbers are distributed evenly, and a complete usage of all digits that are allocated for the coupon number is guaranteed. The storage of all previously generated numbers is not required; only a coupon index number is required to obtain the next coupon number. The encryption scheme uses two step of the encryption keys implementation.