I know how to accept credit cards through merchant accounts, but I was wondering how it is possible to give out credit cards with associated funding? Do you need to be a bank to do this?

Is there some place where you can purchase wholesale blank cards and associate funds to them? Like a gift card.

Well for gift cards - there are companies out there that create the gift cards for you and then you use their platfrm or possibly Visa's, American Express, MasteCard, etc to process the transaction.

For example, Starbucks uses the First Data platform for their gift card acceptance. Since they use them to process credit cards, everything can be ran thru one terminal

It all depends on volume, your location, etc

Might it be easier to just give coupons or discounts on your web site/

... unless, of course, you want them to be able to spend the money other places ...

(the gift cards can be set up to either spend the money only at one location or at various locations). There are some gift cards issued by AmEx that can be spent anywhere that AmEx is accepted but I was going on the fact that you wanted them only accepted at your location