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/// Issuing · Card Programs

Two speeds of card, one program

Not every customer needs the same card on day one. Issuing pairs a full debit program with an instant prepaid tier — and a path from one to the other.

Contact usAll products
60s
To an instant prepaid card
€10,000
Monthly — full-KYC debit
€150
Monthly — light-KYC prepaid
500
Cards per custom run
/// 01

Debit for the committed

The full-KYC tier issues physical and virtual debit cards attached to an IBAN, with €10,000 of monthly capacity. This is the card for customers who have finished onboarding and use the account as an account.

/// 02

Prepaid in sixty seconds

The light-KYC tier gets a customer from nothing to a working card in 60 seconds — €150 monthly capacity, reloadable. It is the honest answer to drop-off: give people a card before the paperwork, and upgrade them when they are ready.

  • [ 01 ]Instant issue, virtual first
  • [ 02 ]Reloadable — a real card, not a voucher
  • [ 03 ]A built-in upgrade path to full debit
/// 03

Plastic worth putting a logo on

The card designer covers finish, color, and logo placement, and production runs start at 500 cards — small enough that a first program does not need enterprise volume to look like one.

/// Features
Six programs, one console — tiers, BIN ranges, and today's spend.
/// 01

The programs console

Every program on one screen: 48,210 cards issued, 41,882 active, €184,032 of spend today at a 98.2% auth rate. The two tiers sit side by side with their limits printed on them, and each program shows its BIN range, type, and status.

  • [ 01 ]Debit and prepaid tiers side by side
  • [ 02 ]Per-program BIN ranges and status
  • [ 03 ]Pause one program without touching the rest
From proof to plastic — finish, color, logo, and a live quote.
/// 02

The card designer

Design the physical card in the console: matte black, brushed silver, or recycled finish; an accent color; your logo as SVG or PDF; embossed name on or off. The run prices out live — 500 cards at €4.20 each, €2,100 total, proof in 48 hours, delivery in three weeks.

Phone, name, card — 60 seconds from nothing to paying online.
/// 03

A card in 60 seconds

The light-KYC flow asks for a verified phone and a name — no documents — and issues a live virtual card on the spot. It pays online immediately and is wallet-ready for Apple Pay and Google Pay. The locked rows show exactly what full KYC adds.

One card's rulebook — limits, channels, and category blocks in force.
/// 04

Spend controls per card

Card 4417 carries its rules on one page: a €500 hard cap per authorization, €1,000 daily, €2,500 weekly, €10,000 monthly — each with a live meter against it. Channels toggle independently — online, contactless, and ATM on; magstripe fallback off — and merchant categories block by MCC, declining with code 57. Every rule is enforced at authorization, so a change applies to the very next attempt.

  • [ 01 ]Limits by period, each with spend shown against it
  • [ 02 ]Channel toggles down to magstripe fallback
  • [ 03 ]MCC blocks — the demo declines gambling, visible in the activity feed
Arc Studio Debit — the whole program readable on one screen.
/// 05

A program on one page

Arc Studio Debit reads top to bottom: full-KYC debit on BIN 53728 41xx, 2,000 new cards a month against a plan-wide allowance, KYC set to ID plus liveness plus address with a 2m 40s average clear time — and the live numbers alongside: 12,480 issued, 10,982 active, 98.2% auth rate. Pause and close sit on the same page, as two different weights of action.

A new virtual card — pick the design, generate, done.
/// 06

Virtual cards users create themselves

In the cardholder app, a new virtual card is a swipe and a tap: pick a design — Lime, in the shot — and generate. Card type, currency, and program are stated before the tap, and the card exists in seconds.

Search-first card operations — find the one card, then act on it.
/// 07

Card ops start with a search

The operator console opens card work with a search, not a browse: find one card by numeric id or by holder, then operate on it. There is deliberately no bulk list to scroll, and PAN-shaped input is refused at the field — the console never wants the full number.

Freezing •••• 4417 — blast radius stated, reason written, PROD to confirm.
/// 08

A freeze that explains itself

The freeze dialog states its blast radius in plain words: every new authorization on •••• 4417 declines immediately, in-flight settlements still post, and unfreezing restores the card. The operator writes a reason for the audit log, types PROD because this is production, and the action logs under their name — with the card's state history sitting alongside.

Card variants — a governed palette, with one variant always enabled.
/// 09

Variants governed like config

The palette of virtual-card colours users pick from is configuration with rules: each variant's colour key is immutable once created, at least one variant must stay enabled, and edits happen in the audited console — not in a deploy.

/// And more

Full-KYC debit

The full tier issues physical and virtual debit cards attached to an IBAN, with €10,000 of monthly capacity, SEPA in and out, and ATM withdrawals included. It is the card for customers who use the account as an account.

Light-KYC prepaid

The instant tier is virtual, capped at €150 a month, and reloadable by SEPA transfer or card top-up. Instant does not mean throwaway — it is a real card that keeps working and keeps reloading.

The upgrade path

Prepaid customers finish KYC when they are ready, not before they start. Completing it lifts the monthly limit from €150 to €10,000, attaches an IBAN, unlocks worldwide ATM withdrawals, and opens the physical card order.

Virtual first

Every card exists virtually the moment it is issued; plastic is an option, not a prerequisite. Customers pay online and in wallets on day one and order the physical card only if they want one.

Runs from 500 cards

Custom physical production starts at 500 cards — €2,100 at the demo's €4.20 unit price. A first program gets custom plastic without enterprise volume.

Wallet provisioning

Cards push-provision into Apple Pay and Google Pay at issue time as device tokens, so a virtual card is a tap-to-pay card the same minute — and a compromised phone costs a token, not the card. In the demo flow, the wallet is ready before any document is uploaded.

Program management

Programs run independently — the demo book has four live, one paused, one in review. Each carries its own BIN range and tier, and pausing one stops issuance there without touching the others.

Per-card economics

Pricing is per card and printed on the tier: €4.20 for full-KYC debit, €0.90 for light-KYC prepaid. The cost of a program is arithmetic.

Freeze from either side

Cardholders freeze from the app or the controls page; operators freeze from the console with a written reason. Both are instant, both decline every new authorization including recurring payments, and both reverse cleanly.

Webhooks per program

Programs push card.issued, card.activated, auth.declined, and kyc.updated to the partner's endpoint, signed with a per-program secret. Each delivery shows its status and latency, and a failing delivery retries on schedule rather than disappearing.

KYC as a measured pipeline

The KYC block names its provider and its numbers: a 2m 40s average clear time, manual review on 4.1% of applications. Onboarding performance is a stat on the settings page, not a quarterly surprise.

Capacity you can read

Each program holds a monthly issuing capacity, metered against a plan-wide allowance — 312 of 2,000 issued in the demo's July. Growth planning starts from a number that is already on screen.

Pause, then close

Pausing a program stops new issuance and nothing else; closing a program is a separate, deliberate action. The two live at different weights, so an incident response never becomes an amputation.

Tier changes take review

Switching a program's tier re-runs program review, and existing cards keep their current tier. The settings page says so before you try — no card changes shape under its holder.

Every card binds to a person

A card in the console is never anonymous: it binds to a holder with their verification status shown, and the full customer view is one click away. Card operations happen with the customer in sight.

State history per card

Each card carries its own timeline — issued, limits changed, authorizations settled — with who did what: the system or a named operator. The card's biography is part of the record.

Reissue and cancel, same discipline

Freeze is not the only lifecycle action: reissue replaces a card, cancel ends one. Both run through the same reason-required, audited flow as everything else in the console.

Processing and settlement, named

Every program states its processing and settlement stack on the settings page — cards-eu and banking-eu in the demo. Where authorizations run and where money lands is configuration you can read, not archaeology.

Whitelabel to the plastic

The cardholder app, the card art, and the physical proof all carry the partner's brand — YourBrand in the demo shots. The program is yours to the touch; the rails underneath are ours.

/// In the product
The programs console — debit and prepaid, side by side.
The card designer — finish, color, logo, then a 500-card run.
60 seconds later — a live prepaid card in the wallet.
Spend controls — limits by period, channels, and MCC blocks, applied in seconds.
Program settings — tier, capacity, KYC, and webhooks on one page.
Creating a virtual card — swipe to a design, generate in seconds.
/// The operator console
  • Card ops start with a search — no bulk list, no PANs accepted.
  • Freezing 4417 — blast radius stated, reason written, PROD typed to confirm.
  • Card variants — the palette users pick from, governed like config.
/// FAQ

Card programs, answered.

  • The funding source and the ceiling. Prepaid spends a loaded balance — light-KYC, €150 monthly, reloadable. Debit spends an IBAN account — full-KYC, €10,000 monthly, with SEPA and ATM withdrawals. The upgrade path is finishing verification; existing cards keep their tier.

  • Every new authorization declines, from the next attempt on. Freezes work from both sides — cardholder in the app, operator in the console with a written reason — and reverse cleanly, no reissue needed.

  • Push provisioning at issue time. The wallet stores a device token, not the card number — if a phone is compromised, the token is replaced and the card survives.

  • Limits with live meters, channel toggles, and merchant-category (MCC) blocks — enforced at authorization, so a change applies to the very next attempt.

  • Finish, color, and logo in the in-console designer, with live pricing — 500 cards, €2,100 in the demo. Every card exists virtually from issue; plastic is an option, not a prerequisite.

/// Pricing

How a card program is engaged.

[ 01 ]

Program license

A license to run a card program end to end — full-KYC debit with an IBAN, or a light-KYC prepaid card — scoped to the program and the rails behind it.

[ 02 ]

Per-card economics

Cost that tracks the cards in circulation and the spend across them rather than an upfront platform fee.

[ 03 ]

Whitelabel build & operate

Your brand on virtual and physical cards, operated for you — scope follows the card types, the KYC tier, and physical-card runs.

What drives cost is the program — card types, the KYC tier, and the cards in circulation — and whether you run it standalone or whitelabeled. Physical-card runs are scoped separately.

/// Evaluate

Issue a card in the sandbox.

[ 01 ]

Guided program walkthrough

We walk both tiers with you — full-KYC debit with an IBAN and a light-KYC prepaid card issued in seconds — plus the custom card designer.

[ 02 ]

Sandbox program

A test card program where your team can issue virtual cards, set spend controls, and watch authorizations decline at the limit.

[ 03 ]

API access, webhooks, and docs

The issuing and controls APIs, authorization webhooks, and docs — enough to stand a card program against test rails.

[ 04 ]

Custom card preview

A run through the in-console designer — finish, color, and logo — so you can see your physical card before a 500-card run.

Request sandbox access
/// Further reading
Availability

Card programs run under the Protocore brand or fully whitelabeled as yours.

In the ecosystem

cards issued here spend against Pay's ledger, are frozen and reissued through Center, and are accepted at Gateway and PoS like any other card.

Pick a product. Or take the core.

Everything above runs in production demos we can walk you through — standalone, whitelabel, or as one platform. Tell us what you're building and we'll show you the shortest path to it.

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