How Credit Consumer Issuing worksPrivate preview

Learn about the features and APIs you need to create, launch, and manage a credit program for your customers.

Private preview

Credit Consumer Issuing is in private preview and is only available in the United States. To join the waitlist, submit your email.

Use Consumer Credit Issuing and a bank partner to create, launch, and manage a credit program for your consumers (often referred to as cardholders).

Integrate with Stripes public APIs to build an integration that enables you to:

Manage a credit program with BIN sponsorship	Stripe uses BIN sponsorship to let you work with card networks without needing your own sponsor bank or bank charter. Collaborate with our sponsor banks (such as Celtic Bank) to define product terms such as credit limits, APRs, grace periods, fee schedules, and interest accrual terms. Customize the way your credit program operates, such as determining how your consumers can earn rewards. For example, you can provide access to a credit card that offers 5% cash back on every transaction.
Partner with card networks such as Visa or Mastercard	Stripe’s payment processing directly integrates with Visa and Mastercard. This means you can work with a bank partner to issue cards for Visa and Mastercard depending on your location.
Use Stripe’s credit ledger	Stripe provides a credit ledger that serves as a system of record for tracking consumer account balances over time. It maintains a detailed log of all financial activity (such as purchases, payments, interest charges, fees, and adjustments) and applies your program’s rules when calculating interest or allocating payments. The credit ledger is your primary reference for consumer account data.

Manage a credit program with BIN sponsorship

Stripe uses BIN sponsorship to let you work with card networks without needing your own sponsor bank or bank charter.

Collaborate with our sponsor banks (such as Celtic Bank) to define product terms such as credit limits, APRs, grace periods, fee schedules, and interest accrual terms.

Customize the way your credit program operates, such as determining how your consumers can earn rewards. For example, you can provide access to a credit card that offers 5% cash back on every transaction.

Partner with card networks such as Visa or Mastercard

Stripe’s payment processing directly integrates with Visa and Mastercard. This means you can work with a bank partner to issue cards for Visa and Mastercard depending on your location.

Use Stripe’s credit ledger

Stripe provides a credit ledger that serves as a system of record for tracking consumer account balances over time. It maintains a detailed log of all financial activity (such as purchases, payments, interest charges, fees, and adjustments) and applies your program’s rules when calculating interest or allocating payments. The credit ledger is your primary reference for consumer account data.

Prerequisites

Before you can use Credit Consumer Issuing, you must have the following:

Capital: You’ll need to bring your own capital or work with a capital provider to purchase the balances of your consumers.
Underwriting rules: Additionally, you must have your own underwriting rules. Stripe can provide the underwriting engine to ingest your predefined rules to make approval or denial decisions subject to the issuing bank’s credit policy.

Stripe’s consumer credit program

Use Credit Consumer Issuing to define:

Revolving lines of credit for consumers: Allows your credit consumers to access funds up to a predetermined credit limit. Consumers in your program must complete the minimum payment for every billing cycle.
Annual percentage rates (APRs): The annual rate charged on the cardholder’s credit balance or earned through an investment.
Consumer fees: Charges that a consumer might incur from their credit card for various activities or services such as annual membership fees or late payment fees.
Program benefits: Refer to the additional perks or advantages that a cardholder can earn and redeem using your card program such as purchase protection.
Program rules and policies: Guidelines that govern how your card program operates setting the standards and obligations of both the provider and the consumer.
Consumer rewards: Incentives offered to credit card holders or loyalty program members for using a particular financial product. They come in various forms such as points, miles, or cash back, and are often redeemable by applying rewards to reduce the cardholder’s balance.

Stripe APIs

Launching a bank-sponsored credit card program using Stripe involves several stages, with each stage requiring integration with Stripe’s public APIs.

These are the stages:

Stage	Description
Onboard consumers	Create the user interface to onboard consumers to your bank-sponsored credit program, and use Stripe’s public APIs to collect KYC data.
Confirm the consumer acceptance	Confirm and notify the acceptance of a credit application to the applicable consumer.
Save payment methods	Create a cardholder object and a SetupIntent object to save the payment methods of consumers without collecting immediate payment.
Issue cards	After a consumer successfully onboards, and you’ve created a cardholder object (to save payment methods for future use), issue physical or virtual cards. Physical cards require different APIs to provide shipment tracking details and enable card activation for the consumer.
Authorize payments	Integrate with Stripe’s authorization webhooks to approve or deny authorizations for payments based on your own logic.
Manage money movement	Set up money movement between balances representing Stripe, the consumer, and your business–such as wiring funds to a consumer’s Stripe account balance.
Set up transactions history	Enable your consumers to view their transaction history for an applicable credit period.
Provide statements	Provide statements for your consumers to track their credit balance.
Use the Credit ledger	Monitor each consumer’s balance and their rewards using the credit ledger maintained by Stripe.
Set up transactions history	Enable your consumers to view their transaction history for an applicable credit period.
Provide statements	Provide statements for your consumers to track their credit balance.
Use the Credit ledger	Monitor each consumer’s balance and their rewards using the credit ledger maintained by Stripe.
Stripe data reports	Integrate with Stripe Reports to view insights about your business.

To learn more about these APIs, contact your Stripe account manager.

Features

Credit Consumer Issuing automatically:

Issues physical and virtual cards with a bank partner to customers
You can issue physical or virtual cards using APIs or the Stripe Dashboard. Stripe manages the manufacturing, printing and shipping of the physical cards.
Manages processing with card networks
Stripe manages the card transactions processed through payment networks, enabling the transfers of funds between consumers, businesses and financial institutions.
Responds to disputes on behalf of the cardholder
When cardholders report a dispute, Stripe automatically manages and responds to the dispute with the applicable card network on your behalf. If you win or lose a dispute, Stripe notifies you on the status of the dispute.
Approves or denies payment authorization requests in real time
Issuer processing lets Stripe approve or decline payment authorization requests in real time. Stripe evaluates each transaction based on available credit, account status, and your program’s terms. Stripe also handles payment processing, eliminating the need for a separate processor.
Uses advanced fraud alerts
Stripe uses advanced fraud tools to detect and prevent potential fraud, sending alerts during consumer onboarding if we find suspicious activity.
Reminds and collects outstanding payments from cardholders
Collections refer to the active pursuit of payments from consumers for outstanding debts or charges on their credit balance. Stripe automatically sends repayment reminders and provides payment plans to consumers.
Reports to the Credit Bureau
Stripe handles credit bureau reporting in compliance with Metro2 formats.
Provides platform services and customer management tools
Stripe manages consumer account services on your behalf. This includes dedicated consumer support specialists who interact with your customers and handle inquiries according to your established policies.
Includes reports
You can also get access to basic and advanced reports. Reports provide insights about your business. To access basic reports, navigate to the Issuing page in the Stripe Dashboard or use the Reports API. To access advanced reports, use Stripe Sigma. Our Stripe Data Pipeline also allows you to export Stripe data to your data warehouse to generate these reports.