Building a card-issuing program as a fintech or digital bank is hard. We know because we hear the horror stories all the time. You’ll deal with fraudsters, manage chargebacks and customers who become impatient when things go wrong. 

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It’s worse with physical cards. They can be stolen or go missing, and if the customer doesn't report on time, it becomes a nightmare for your team to deal with. For context, in  2023, companies and customers in Nigeria lost nearly 800 million naira from stolen and missing cards. 

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To build a great card issuing programme, you need a reliable infrastructure with built-in tools for fraud detection, compliance and chargebacks. 

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That’s what we’ve built for you.

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With Kora’s card-issuing APIs, you can issue USD virtual cards for your customers to shop online, pay for tools or their bills. You can also issue corporate cards for your business payments.

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What are virtual cards, and why are they important for businesses?

Virtual cards are like physical cards but without the plastic. They have the typical features of a physical card, like the cardholder's name, CVV, and PIN, and they’re also linked to a bank account. 

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They’re quite convenient and secure because, unlike physical cards, people don’t need to carry them around. 

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Use case for card-issuing 

Kora’s Issuing API suite is for two categories of businesses.

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Fintechs, neobanks and businesses who want to issue their own branded cards

Building a card infrastructure is quite expensive. Instead building one, these businesses can use Kora’s APIs to issue branded cards and offer their customers a personalised experience.

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Businesses who want to create corporate cards for their payments

Business payments can be difficult for business owners to manage. They often use one card to pay for tools, training and other needs. Instead doing this, issue and manage expense cards on your Kora dashboard.

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Why choose Kora’s Issuing APIs?

Control funding limit

With Kora, you can limit transaction count(daily and monthly), purchase per card, spend and funding limit on the cards you issue. This helps minimise fraud and also protects customer funds if their account gets compromised. In addition, you can set alerts for when a customer exceeds their spending limit.

Built-in compliance

Confirming a customer’s identity before issuing cards to them is standard KYC practice. While this can be challenging for businesses, we’ve made it easier for you with Identity APIs. This way, your business is compliant when issuing cards to your customers. 

Security

Chargebacks can be frustrating to deal with as the processing fees can be as high as $50 per transaction without proper processes to manage them. To prevent this, we’ve built a robust chargeback console on your dashboard to respond to chargeback requests in time and avoid fraud or paying unnecessary processing fees. 

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Commonly asked questions

‍How do I access card Issuing on my Kora dashboard?

1. Head to merchant.korapay.com and create a merchant account

2. Complete all compliance requirements, including PCI-DSS requirements

3. Go to Issuing on your dashboard, click Customer Cards, then click Request Access. Then select the payment value, select PCI-DSS level and finally select a subscription plan. For corporate cards, click Reserved Cards, request access and fill in the necessary details and if your details check out, we'll approve your request.

4. After approval, fund your balance and then issue cards to your customers.

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How do I manage chargebacks?

We created a chargeback console for you on the Kora dashboard. 

On the Issuing tab, go to Disputes. From there, you can manage all chargebacks from your customers and check the status of chargeback requests.

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What’s the biggest requirement for issuing Kora’s card?

Before you can issue cards with Kora’s APIs, you need to have a PCI-DSS certification. Being a card issuer is a big responsibility, and having a PCI-DSS equips you to protect your customers' data. However, we understand that businesses have different  compliance and risk levels, so we built our issuing product in tiers. Businesses can select a tier based on their funding limit, compliance level, and business needs. 

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Issuing cards should be seamless for your business.

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With Kora's APIs, issue cards for your customers and business while managing fraud, compliance and chargebacks from one place.

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At Kora, our goal is to connect Africa to the world and connect the world to Africa via payments. For startups and businesses working in Africa, we provide All The Support You Need ™️ to start, scale and thrive on the continent.

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‍Sign up to see all the ways you can thrive with Kora.