Issuing CreditPrivate preview

Use the Credit APIs to build a capital-efficient charge card integration. Learn how to:

• Set up credit for connected accounts.
• Manage credit terms.
• Report other credit decisions and manage adverse action notices.
• Manage FundingObligations for each connected account.
• Test your integration.

What is a charge card?

Charge cards are conceptually similar to credit cards – they allow account owners to spend ahead of available funds and then repay the creditor after the funds have been spent. Both cards enable the account owners to spend on a line of credit. However, unlike credit cards, charge card accounts can’t roll over a balance at the end of a payment term or accumulate interest on unpaid balances. Instead, any balance on a charge card must be paid in full at the end of a payment term. If a charge card accountholder doesn’t pay the full balance when due, they might incur a late payment fee or another form of penalty.

Stripe helps platforms build a compliant charge card programme through our APIs (outlined below), and our receivables purchase program – our legal, compliance, and lending solution that enables platforms to offer businesses access to credit via our bank partners, without having to acquire lending licences or navigate state-specific requirements. Our partner banks are the lenders of record, and platforms can purchase receivables from the bank via Stripe.

Learn more about the Stripe Issuing Charge Card programme.

How can you fund your programme?

As businesses use your charge card programme to make purchases, you need to apply your platform’s Issuing funds towards supporting your connected accounts’ spend. Use the following methods to fund your charge card programme:

Pre-funding: Apply your platform’s Issuing funds towards authorising your connected accounts’ card transactions if any connected account’s Issuing balance doesn’t hold enough funds to support the spend. After you apply your funds toward your connected accounts’ transactions, these funds are used to purchase the receivables created by the user’s transactions. This approach is most suitable for early-stage charge card programmes that seek to get to market quickly.

Postfunding: Choose to postfund your connected accounts’ spend, settling with Stripe only on transactions captured after the last business day. With this approach, your platform exposure limit applies to the Issuing card spend of your Connected Accounts. You pay Stripe for the spend (in other words, you purchase receivables from Stripe) after the transactions settle. This approach is most suitable for growth-stage or scaled charge card programmes where the added capital efficiency is critical.

Get access to the Issuing Credit beta

Contact your Stripe account representative or sales to join the Charge Card beta or access to the Credit APIs for other use cases.