Promotion data and coupon display held on data and printable card

摘要

A real-time, individually targeted promotions system includes user cards (10), and printer/reader/writer terminals. The user card (10) comprises a magnetic surface (18a) for writing, storing and re-writing machine readable data and a thermo-reversible print region (17) or display region for receiving and visually displaying a determined response to a user in non-volatile, erasable, re-writable graphical or textual human-readable format. The terminal receives the user card and reads the code stored on the data region of the card and also receives data for the current transaction. This data is processed to determine the response to be provided to the cardholder, perhaps advice of a promotion or prize or discount. Details of the response are written to the data region of the card to be taken into account when the card is next used, and also to the display region of the card so that the cardholder can see the information of the response. At next insertion of the card into a terminal of the system, the information in the display region is erased and new graphical information is written onto the display region to update the information visible to the user