How can companies launch their self-branded card program using one full-stack solution?

Whether you are fresh to card programs or migrating from your current one, Striga offers you an easy, all-in-one solution to create, issue, and manage virtual and physical cards. It works via an API with a special gateway from crypto to fiat or vice-versa, so that you can successfully deploy your “blended” crypto-native card program.

Innovators & Business Owners’ Challenge:

A complex and expensive card ecosystem with more than 8 third parties involved

Today, companies need to establish multiple partnerships to run a functional card program. Instead of focusing on customer experience, innovators have to spend countless hours handling multiple relationships with different providers, payment clearing partners, card manufacturers, processors, and 3DS providers. It gets tedious, fast.

Complex Issuing systems and a challenging partner network

In addition to the aforementioned challenges, companies will need to manage multiple other responsibilities, including:

• Scheme reporting
• Fraud monitoring
• Treasury management
• Compliance obligations
• Unplanned downtime

Of course, on top of all of this, there’s dealing with the inescapable and sometimes unexpected schema changes and breakdowns.

Benefits: Why Striga?

A built-in platform to jumpstart your card-issuing program

Striga has done the groundwork for you, so you don’t have to go searching for process integrations with different processors and providers. It could take months, if not years, and distract you from your focus on growing your user base and product.

Striga – your gateway for card issuing and management

Striga’s all-in-one solution protects you from the wastefulness of the card-issuing process and the costs of managing multiple stakeholders. By integrating Striga, you can easily manage different relationships with the aforementioned partners, creating simple and scalable protocols. The result? A better customer experience and lower costs.

Virtual and Physical cards with a customizable design & flexible program

Striga’s card issuing platform has partnerships and integrations with issuing banks and central card networks (i.e. Visa and MasterCard). This way, it can assist you in your issuing, so you can deploy individualized virtual cards for your users in a matter of a few clicks.

Integrations include KYC providers, so that we can help you quickly verify customers’ identities during the onboarding process of your users in a seamless way that doesn’t hinder activation. Once that is successfully accomplished, you can give them their own cards. On top of that, you will have dedicated admin tools to manage their cards’ lifecycle: activate, specify expiration offset, suspend, terminate, and handle card fulfillment, inventory, and shipping in bulk. You get the control you need.

A simplified back office with an open API

Owning a card issuing platform with open APIs allows you to design your card solution, and personalize it to your user’s needs. When your core business model expands toward brand new use cases, open APIs allow you to create those necessary features effortlessly and cheaply in terms of development costs.

Use-case: How to build an outstanding loyalty program with open API?

Striga enables crypto companies to offer their users a competitive crypto card program, where they can spend their crypto balance by converting to fiat currency instants before their card’s swipe clears. Companies can adjust credit card limits based on users’ crypto balances by managing different constraints, like types of currencies, frequency, or time of use. For example, crypto companies can offer Just-in-time funding where they can control and customize transactions in real-time. With JIT, the cards hold a 0 Eur balance until you confirm the funds.

Dynamic spending controls

By specifying spending limits, fiat/crypto amounts, and/or time of use, companies can define exactly when, where, and how cards will be operated. You can limit card authorizations and include different rules to reduce the risk of fraud, and prevent unauthorized or excessive spending. This way, you will build a secure and outstanding reputation for your company.

Use-case: Allow your customers to pay in crypto without changing their spending habits

Striga enables crypto companies to offer their users a competitive crypto card program, where they can spend their crypto balance by converting to fiat currency instants before their card’s swipe clears. Companies can adjust credit card limits based on users’ crypto balances by managing different constraints, like types of currencies, frequency, or time of use. For example, crypto companies can offer Just-in-time funding where they can control and customize transactions in real time. With JIT, the cards hold a 0 Eur balance until you confirm the funds.

Access to transaction data: Manage your program from a personalized Dashboard

Answering key questions about your product and users requires processed data. With the Striga Dashboard, you can get the name and cardholder information of your approved users, the cardholder’s activity, balances, declined transactions, and everything else you want to know to properly manage your card program.

Steps To Launch A Card Program​:

What steps must companies take to launch an embedded fiat-crypto card program?

Step 1: Design your self-branded cards

Craft your fully branded cards’ design. Send us your unique concepts and special packaging, or let us accompany you through the creative process. The cards will then be sent for printing and remain ready to dispatch.

Step 2: Integrate your logic via API

Plug in using our simple online documentation and testing environment sandbox. Then, allow Striga to accomplish all the hard work for you.

Step 3: Cards Program Management

Start managing your card program from a web-based application. Monitor transactions, payments, and card lifecycles. Additionally, you can create your process to handle the operational part of the card program, such as chargebacks, negative balances, and fraud monitoring.

Step 4: Test and Go live

Issue your first cards internally, or to trusted cardholders, and ask for feedback before going live. Afterward, you can go public and launch your fully branded cards program.

What does the card program look like from your client’s perspective?

What is the process users usually follow to get their hands on a crypto card?

Crypto retail companies are fighting to acquire and retain customers in a highly competitive market. Cards are starting to emerge as a distinctive offering, so more and more users are trying to get their hands on them.

Account creation – Crypto App: The client opens an account in a crypto-related app (exchange, wallet). There, he completes his KYC and begins investing in crypto and other digital currencies. Soon after, he will want to use his newly earned money in the real world.

Striga joins the game – Crypto Native Banking as a Service: The client orders the card offered by the crypto app, which leverages Striga to do so. Now, the cardholder may begin spending his crypto earnings immediately.

Spending Starts – Grocery Shop: The client swipes his card, and the store processes it just as they would any other Visa or MasterCard card.

Just-in-Time Funding: Striga sends a gateway Just-In-Time (JIT) funding request for the crypto app to confirm the trade. The crypto app validates the transaction after confirming the customer’s crypto balance in their account (crypto-fiat exchange).

Funds Released via the Card: The Fiat funds are released to the card upon approval, and the transaction is completed in real-time.

Successful Card Transaction: The authorization is successful and the payment is confirmed.

Use-case 1 : Fintech

How can a fintech make crypto payments mainstream?

One of the greatest challenges for cryptocurrencies is whether owners will actively and consistently make payments with them. The Striga Cards Suite brings that question to the fore by making it easier for FinTech companies to issue cryptocurrency debit cards. Striga takes all of the friction away, so users can go straight to purchasing.

FinTech companies can offer crypto rewards on debit cards

Companies can enable their users to participate in a crypto-based rewards program that allows them to earn digital assets in the same way they currently earn cashback. These can then be traded, invested, or saved for future purchases, which can be a great way of boosting retention and engagement.

How do your users earn crypto rewards?

The cryptocurrency is converted into the user’s fiat currency of preference before being loaded to the debit card. Once loaded and ready to use, assets are processed in that specific currency. Rewards, however, are given as a specific coin depending on the debit card.

Offer your users instant and seamless spending

Using a reward program, Fintech customers can maintain as much crypto as they want, rather than exchange them. They can keep the crypto in savings and have the flexibility to spend on a transaction-by-transaction basis. This near-instant capacity to go from crypto to readily spendable fiat is what finally breaks the dilemma many holders face: how to hold as much bitcoin as possible without losing the real-world comforts that fiat currently dominates.

Use-case 2 : Crypto wallets:

How are wallets using crypto card programs to increase the loyalty of their users?

Offer your users an easy conversion of loyalty points into tokens

One of the greatest benefits of launching a crypto card program is allowing users to pay in the currency of their choice. Crypto rewards (cashback) in the cards can also be a powerful way of increasing retention and bolstering card use. For example, once the user gets accustomed to getting rewards on all of their grocery purchases, they will start considering that reward as the baseline for a card program, and have a hard time going back to other companies. Every time the client spends with a crypto rewards card, this incentive will be reinforced, creating a positive loop.

In brief, through the crypto card, there are multiple options akin to giving crypto rewards that can have a positive and reinforced effect on engagement and retention, increasing a sustainable source of revenue and keeping a company’s user base content in the long term.

Closing thoughts

Design, Issue and Manage your embedded crypto cards under one single platform.Cryptocurrencies may well reshape the future of finance. Still, the sector encounters unique challenges, not least finding a crypto-native platform that understands the demands of the industry and offers the scalable crypto infrastructure that is so urgently needed.

Striga helps companies launch products that combine financial and crypto infrastructures in as little as a few weeks. As if that weren’t enough, Striga’s expertise allows it to do all of it orders of magnitude cheaper than what the industry leaders are charging due to their old-fashioned approaches

About Striga

Striga (formerly Lastbit) provides financial services infrastructure for companies in the crypto, banking & issuing space. Traditionally the cost & time associated with launching a FinTech solution whether it is a neo-bank, a business banking product or a platform has been absurdly high and complex. This is compounded 10x if you are a company that has an element of crypto in your business.