A system for managing loyalty incentives for a customer, including a personal loyalty account at a centralized server assigned to the customer for storing the balance of a first amount of loyalty incentives for the customer, a loyalty card carried with the customer for identifying and accessing the personal loyalty account and including a loyalty purse for storing a second amount of loyalty incentives, a first merchant terminal operable to interface with the loyalty card for awarding the customer an awarded amount of loyalty incentives by selecting whether to add the awarded amount to the loyalty purse or to add a first predefined amount of loyalty incentives to the loyalty account and receive the difference between the first predefined amount and the awarded amount from the loyalty purse.