Customise your card programme
Learn how to customise your Stripe Issuing card programme to meet your business needs.
Stripe Issuing allows you to customise your card programme to fit your business needs. View your programme details in the Dashboard’s Issuing settings.
BIN Setup
A Bank Identification Number (BIN) is the six or eight digits at the beginning of a card number that identify both the card network and the bank that issues the card. We license a BIN for you when you create your card programme. Most users have one BIN per Issuing setup.
Account ranges are the digits that immediately follow the BIN on a card number. For 6-digit BINs, these are the seventh to ninth digits on a card. For 8-digit BINs, the account range is the ninth digit on a card. BINs work together with account ranges to help acquirers identify the card issuer.
Set up your Issuing programme on either a shared BIN or a dedicated BIN:
- Shared BIN: Default. You share your BIN with other card network users. We recommend this option for most users because it requires less configuration and is cheaper to enable. A user on a shared BIN might have a unique account range to help acquirers identify authorisations coming from that user.
- Dedicated BIN Preview: The entire BIN is only associated with your accounts.
Card product type
Card product type is a setting that affects the features available to you and your cardholders through Stripe Issuing. We recommend selecting a card product type based on the size of your business and what you purchase with the cards.
Note
Card product type differs from card type. Card type usually indicates a different aspect of the card, such as whether it’s a credit or debit card.
Stripe offers four primary card product types:
| Type | Description | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Visa Business | Helps small businesses and organisations separate business and personal expenses. This allows your business to manage cash flow. This includes business tooling like receipt capture and accounting software integrations. | Small businesses (less than 100 employees) that want to manage their business expenses, or platforms that serve small businesses. |
| Visa Business Signature | Same as Visa Business, with extra rewards and benefits. | Small businesses (less than 100 employees) that want rewards and protection benefits. |
| Commercial Corporate card | Helps employees pay their travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses securely. Provides granular spending information. | Medium-size businesses to large enterprises (100 or more employees) that primarily need to manage spend on travel and entertainment, or platforms that serve these businesses. |
| Commercial Fleet card | Provides payment solutions to manage all expenses generated by a vehicle fleet operation, including fuel, maintenance, and repairs. | Medium-size to large enterprises (100 or more employees) that manage fleet expenses, or platforms that serve these businesses. |
| Commercial Purchasing card | Expedites the procurement process and saves cost by eliminating the need to issue purchase orders for procurement, invoices, and cheques. | Medium-size to large enterprises (100+ employees) with use cases that don’t fit into Commercial Corporate or Commercial Fleet, or platforms that serve these businesses. |
The card product type you choose affects the type of data you receive for each transaction. For example:
- A user with a Commercial Fleet card receives specific fleet-related data for transactions, such as:
- Number of gallons pumped
- Type of fuel pumped
- Odometer readings
- Itemised fuel and non-fuel purchases
- A user with a Commercial Corporate card receives specific travel and entertainment-related data for transactions, such as:
- Flight carrier
- Flight departure time
- Airport code
- Hotel check-in date
- Number of nights in a hotel stay
- A user with a Commercial Purchasing card receives invoice-specific data for transactions, such as:
- Number of items purchased
- Quantity of each item
Set up multiple card product types on Stripe if more than one card product type is relevant for your business. You can’t use multiple card product types if you set up a Business card.
Network preference
Stripe supports both the Mastercard and Visa card networks. When you onboard to Issuing, you decide which card network to issue cards with. The card network you choose becomes your default network. To change your default network at any time, contact Stripe Support.
Multi-network issuing Preview
You can issue cards on both Mastercard and Visa at the same time.
Only Issuing customers can join this preview. To request access to the preview, contact Stripe Support.
Funding types
When you set up your Issuing programme, you need to choose how you want to fund the cards. Choose your funding type based on your card product type and your liquidity options. Stripe offers two options that support a variety of business needs:
| Prepaid | Credit | |
|---|---|---|
| Details | Card balances are pre-funded into an account that’s reloaded by the platform (in case of a direct integration), or by a connected account, as often as necessary. | Card balances are linked to an external credit account. |
| Best for | Pre-loading balances without an attached current account. | Pre-loading balances with an attached external credit account. |
| Supported card product types |
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Card benefits and rewards
All cards issued through Stripe have available default and optional cardholder benefits.
Card benefits
By default, your cardholders receive automatically-included benefits that vary depending on your programme’s card product type.
Note
This table refers to Visa benefits only. For information about MasterCard benefits, contact Stripe Support or your account manager.
| Card product type | Included benefits |
| Visa Business |
|
| Visa Business Signature |
|
Commercial Corporate Commercial Purchasing Commercial Fleet |
|
All programmes require the following services be provided to cardholders. You can offer the service to your cardholders yourself, or use the card network’s offering for a usage-based fee.
- Cardholder enquiry service
- Lost or stolen card reporting
- Emergency card replacement and emergency cash disbursement
Optional benefits
When setting up your programme, you can also choose to provide one or more additional, non-standard benefits from the list below. Optional benefits can help drive cardholder transactions in the categories you want to incentivise spend for. These benefits incur a per-active-card fee when used that Stripe passes on to you. After you select the benefits you want to enrol your programme in, your Stripe account or support partner works with you to provide additional details and make sure the benefits are set up properly.
Optional benefits are available to you through a third-party Stripe network partner. Enrolment isn’t effective until you receive confirmation from Stripe or our benefits partner. Certain terms, conditions, and exclusions apply.
| Card product type | Optional benefits |
| Visa Business |
|
| Visa Business Signature |
|
Commercial Corporate Commercial Purchasing Commercial Fleet |
|
Marketing
To make sure that your cardholders use benefits and get value from them, you need to communicate with them about benefit details. Our card network provider must review and approve all marketing materials or cardholder-facing terms before publishing. We work with you during the approval process by supplying you with sample, pre-approved messaging if you don’t draft your own. This is a required step to launching a benefits programme. The review process can take 5-7 business days.
Rewards
Although Stripe doesn’t provide rewards on any of its issued cards, you can set up your own rewards programme on any of the cards you issue through us. Of the card product types Stripe offers, rewards are only a requirement for Visa Business Signature. The only requirement before going live is to make sure that our card network partner has reviewed and signed off on the reward terms and promotion details.