How Card-Issuing APIs Can Benefit Your Business (And Your Customers)

Card-issuing APIs make it easier to issue cards, creating an improved experience for your customers, and greater accessibility and control for you.

What Are Card Issuing APIs?

Card-issuing APIs (Application Programming Interface) are used by businesses of all sizes to create and manage different types of business cards for customers or employees. APIs are commonly used in fintech to enable data access among parties involved in financial transactions, such as banks, third-party providers, websites and consumers. Businesses can use card-issuing APIs to quickly issue and manage cards, monitor card use and security, connect employee expense submissions with a company’s accounts payable function,  set authorization limits, and much more.

Download the Rapyd Guide: Five Strategic Questions to Answer Before Launching a Global Prepaid or Debit Card Issuing Program 

How Card-Issuing APIs Can Benefit Your Business (And Your Customers)

How APIs Enhance Card Issuing

Fintech companies like Stripe, Adyen, and Rapyd are using card-issuing APIs to create physical or virtual cards that can be branded and used for a variety of customizable purposes. 

Use Cases of Card Issuing APIs

• Allow your customers or employees to use the cards for in-store, online, or in-app purchases or to enlist in a flexible rewards program
• Authorized cards for set amounts and at specific stores
• Enable gig workers to make only authorized purchases with your card
• Conveniently pay workers and contractors by pushing funds to cards that you issue
• Customize and brand your cards, for better brand imprinting
• Create cards for internal activities like expense management
• Issue cards to be used with only one merchant or a family of merchants
• Decide if you’d like them available for use at an ATM, online, or POS 
• Decide how you’d like the transaction verified
• Opt for virtual single-use cards that terminate after one transaction or multi-use cards that last until a specific expiration date

In these many ways, card issuing APIs allow businesses to deepen their relationship with their existing customers while unlocking innovative payment possibilities, leading to greater customer satisfaction and additional revenue opportunities.

Historically, card issuing programs were limited to more traditional institutions and lengthy, labor-intensive card issuing processes. Card Issuing APIs have now made the process of new card creation a much faster one, streamlining the process for businesses to get their cards in the hands of their customers.

This shift toward wider API use happened as nations in Europe and Asia Pacific issued laws requiring banks to make and share APIs, and allowing third parties to access data with customer consent. This movement toward open banking is spreading across the world, leading to a new generation of innovative fintech products and services.

Benefits of Card-Issuing APIs

• Customer Experience: Card-Issuing API platforms allow businesses and their applications to authorize transactions at checkout and based entirely on benchmarks unique to the business. APIs can issue even virtual cards nearly instantly, enabling customers to make purchases quickly and seamlessly, creating a smoother customer experience combined with even better security.
• Privacy and Security: In modern business, transactions happen every second, sometimes simultaneously and with differing amounts, in different locations, etc. In a traditional transaction, you would only verify identity via one means: a pin or a signature, for example. Instead, an API for card issuance can authorize each transaction based on exact, customized criteria such as merchant ID, transaction amount, location, and even the cardholder through functions like facial recognition.
• Accessibility: With the advent of card-issuing APIs comes the distribution of virtual or ghost cards, which allow anyone to use their cards remotely and securely with their mobile wallets. By enabling an access-anywhere model, APIs increase the availability of a card to be either virtual, physical or both, enabling more transactions anywhere a customer might be. So long as the card-issuing platform has the capability, cards can also be utilized across borders and with differing currency, including domestically.
  

A Better Card Issuing API Solution 

In a step towards direct-to-consumer interaction and keeping customers within their financial ecosystems, companies are partnering with fintechs to use card-issuing APIs. This has sped up and democratized the issuing process substantially, allowing businesses to better tailor their payment experiences to align with their brand and goals. 

Rapyd Issuing Improves Customer Experience and Lowers Costs

This is where Rapyd comes in. We manage the local licensing and regulations in countries and currencies worldwide and streamline your card issuing program with the Rapyd Issuing API. Our rich feature set can simplify your regional or global B2B and B2C issuing strategy. With Rapyd you can create Visa or MasterCard debit cards linked to a funded account, giving you more flexibility when managing your issuing program.

Start focusing on growing new markets instead of building a global card issuing infrastructure by choosing the right card issuing API partner.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki for Pexels.