Importance

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Abstract

An expiring prepaid casino card is disclosed which may be utilized to provide payment for slot machine play or other gambling activities. The disclosed expiring prepaid casino card is preferably a pointer to a monetary amount stored in a casino prepaid card database, that expires in predefined expiration amounts over each of a plurality of predefined expiration periods. If a player does not utilize the entire predefined expiration amount, for a given predefined expiration period, the remaining balance on the expiring prepaid casino card allocated for the expiration period automatically expires and does not roll over into any subsequent expiration periods. The expiring prepaid casino card may alternatively be embodied as a smart card or a general-purpose debit card programmed with the predefined expiration amounts for each predefined expiration period, or a cardless electronic key or personal identification number (PIN) which may be utilized to access data records which have been programmed with the predefined expiration amounts for each predefined expiration period. The expiring prepaid casino card can preferably be (i) purchased by the player at face value, or at a discount; (ii) given out by the casino to a player for free as part of a promotion, or to preferred players; or (iii) issued to a player as part of a payout on a slot machine. In this manner, the player is incented to make return visits to a casino to access each predefined expiration amount for each predefined expiration period. The predefined expiration amounts and expiration periods do not have to be fixed units. Slot machine jackpots can be awarded in the form of an increased total balance on the expiring prepaid casino card that expire in predefined expiration amounts over predefined expiration periods. The expiring prepaid casino card can preferably be programmed with one or more further restrictions or requirements that the player must satisfy before any expiration amounts can be accessed.

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First Claim