Stripe Issuing supports tailored physical and virtual card programs for a variety of business use cases.
1. Cards must be used for business purposes
Cards created through Stripe issuing must always be used for business purposes, and may not be used for personal, family, or household purposes. Consumer use cases are not currently supported, but check back soon for updates.
2. Card spend must be funded by a business or nonprofit
All cards must be funded by a commercial or nonprofit entity, and may not be funded partially or entirely by an individual’s personal funds (although Individual’s business funds are OK, such as for a sole proprietor).
If your customers are other businesses and card spend is funded by those businesses, you’ll need to create connected accounts to onboard each business customer.
3. Card spend restrictions must prohibit transactions unrelated to the use case
All cards must have spend restrictions in line with the stated use case of the platform - see examples below.
4. The platform may not participate in a prohibited or restricted business
Cards may not be used in relation to prohibited or restricted businesses, such as illegal activities, gambling, firearms, adult content, cryptocurrencies and more. See the link above for a full list.
These examples illustrate some of the business use cases supported by Stripe Issuing.
Expense Management platforms
Enable businesses on your platform to issue expense cards to fund, control and manage the spend of their employees. Spend should be restricted to general business related purchases (e.g. travel should be permitted but gambling should be prohibited).
Corporate Benefits
Build a rewards program so your users can offer their employees workplace perks including retention incentives, loyalty perks, customer recognition, etc. Cards cannot be used to make cash disbursements (e.g. pay out wages, tips, or cash bonuses) to employees, and ATM access to card funds is not permitted. The funds must belong to the company (not the cardholder), so when a cardholder’s employment ends any remaining card funds must be forfeited. Spend should be restricted to the allowable employee rewards (e.g. wellness benefit providers should only enable wellness-related transactions)
Contractor Purchase Card
Issue cards to independent contractors or service providers to make purchases on behalf of a company (i.e. a marketplace) in order to complete business activities (i.e. on-demand delivery, home repair, etc.). The marketplace’s products / services may not be in a regulated industry (e.g. sale of pharmaceuticals). Spend should be restricted to the company's industry (e.g. spend for a food delivery marketplace should be restricted to food-related MCC codes).
Fleet
Issue cards for fuel, automotive repairs, and other on-the road expenses within spending categories set by you. Users will receive detailed fuel transaction data for reporting purposes. Spend should be restricted to categories related to fuel and vehicle management.
Factoring
Issue cards to allow businesses (your customers) to spend proceeds from your purchase of their existing invoices (also known as factoring). A business receives a lump sum upfront from the factoring platform as a purchase of receivables from existing account receivables. Cards can only be issued to employees or contractors of your customers. Platforms wishing to launch a factoring use case must provide a legal opinion that states that the financing activity does not constitute a loan, but instead is factoring. Spend should be restricted based on the platform’s target market (e.g. a factoring platform may cater to automotive companies and another may cater to creators).
Insurance Disbursement
Create cards that can be provided to policyholders to pay for approved insurance claims. Cards must be subject to spend controls to ensure that they can only be used to purchase a replacement of an insured item; cards cannot be used for the disbursement of a lump sum. Cards can only be activated once a claim has been approved.
Buy now, Pay Later
Create a Buy Now, Pay Later (“BNPL”) program and create cards to pay merchants for goods and services to resell to your customers. Each transaction must have two distinct components: 1) the purchase of the goods/and or services from the merchant (funded by Cards from Stripe Issuing); 2) the sale of the purchased goods and/or service to the BNPL customer. BNPL platforms must provide a legal opinion showing compliance with applicable licensing requirements and/or lending laws, and are subject to additional review.
B2B Payments
Create cards to purchase goods and services for inventory for resale (e.g. travel platforms purchasing hotel inventory). Funds are loaded to the account to facilitate the B2B leg of a C2B2B transaction. Only virtual cards will be issued in the name of the Stripe User. No consumer should have interaction with the cards and there should be no marketing related to the cards. All Stripe card transactions must be facilitated by the Stripe User and not the Stripe User’s customer. Ticket resellers using bots or limited item resellers (i.e. sneakers) are prohibited. Spend should be restricted to the company's industry (e.g. B2B Payment providers specializing in travel-related purchases should only enable travel-related spend).