A debit card system for implementing an incentive award program for a customer having participants. A plurality of debit cards, each assigned to one participant and having a unique account number corresponding to an award account of the participant is part of the system. A bank filter processor accesses program data including data identifying the authorized unique account numbers of the participants, data identifying the authorized merchants and data indicating the balance in each participant's award account. The filter processor compares this program data to the following transaction data: the initiating account number of the card initiating the transaction, the merchant identification data of the initiating merchant, and the data regarding the amount of the initiated transaction. The filter processor generates validating data for the transaction when the evaluated transaction data indicates that the transaction has been initiated by an authorized merchant using the unique account number of one of the participants having a sufficient balance in the participant's corresponding award account to cover the transaction. Otherwise, invalidating data is generated.