Inactive Issuing-enabled connected accounts can pose a risk to platforms due to heightened potential for lost or compromised cards which could result in transaction fraud. To mitigate this risk, Stripe disables the issuing capability on inactive connected accounts in the USA.

Inactivity criteria

Stripe disables the Issuing capability on connected accounts that haven't completed any card transactions in the past 13 months (395 days). For accounts with additional capabilities, Stripe only disables Issuing if there have also been no payments or Treasury transactions in the prior 395 days, and the Treasury balance is 9.99 USD or less.

Identifying accounts with Issuing disabled

When Issuing is disabled for inactivity, the connect account's card_issuing requirements will show a disabled_reason of rejected.inactivity and the card_issuing capability status is marked as inactive.

What happens when Issuing is disabled for inactivity?

When the issuing capability is disabled, all card authorizations from cards associated with this connected account will be declined, but other capabilities like Payments or Treasury are unaffected.

The platform can reactivate Issuing on an account by re-signing the terms and conditions for that account.

Are inactive cards or cardholders impacted?

No, Issuing is only disabled if all cardholders and cards within the connected account have been inactive. There is no inactivity process for individual inactive cards or cardholders.

Are connected accounts outside the United States disabled for inactivity?

Yes, Stripe disables the Issuing capability on inactive connected accounts in the US, UK, and Europe.

Optimizing your user experience

Consider these updates for a better user experience:

• Update your UX to reflect disabled cards upon seeing a disabled_reason of rejected.inactivity
• Adjust your onboarding flow to minimize connected accounts with inactive issuing by delaying Issuing capability requests until user interest is shown
• Implement your own detection to identify accounts with no authorized Issuing transactions in the prior 365 days and email them to warn of potential upcoming deactivation if they don’t use their cards in the next 30 days.