Stripe has launched Stripe Issuing in Europe to enable users to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical payment cards, giving businesses more control over how they spend their money.
The solution has launched in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. The solution offers businesses in complete control of how, where, and when their money is spent. Whether it be an on-demand delivery marketplace giving couriers cards to pay for orders, or a car rental company providing cards for drivers to purchase petrol,
Cards created on Stripe Issuing can be programmatically controlled, with dynamic spending limits, blocked merchant categories, advanced combinations of rules, and even real-time authorisations for each transaction, all managed via Stripe’s Issuing API. The solution integrates seamlessly with Stripe’s broad suite of products so that users can manage card issuing programmes right alongside payments, fraud prevention, analytics, invoices, and recurring billing.
Businesses can design their own branded cards in the Stripe Dashboard, with Stripe handling card production, fulfillment, and shipping. Virtual cards can be created instantly, and physical cards are shipped in just two business days.
Stripe Issuing already operates at significant scale in the US, powering billions of dollars of payments in its first year, for thousands of businesses and millions of cardholders. Companies like Klarna, Ramp, and Flexshopper, who have existing card-issuing programmes, have signed on to Stripe, and users such as Cornershop have taken advantage of Issuing to launch new business opportunities.
Stripe’s EMEA Business Lead Matt Henderson said:
“Creating and distributing new cards in Europe has long been so complex and opaque that only a handful of companies could ever justify doing it. Today, we’re making it fast, simple, and secure. It used to take months to create and ship new cards in Europe. With Stripe Issuing, it now takes two days. We’ve been astonished by the breadth of use cases businesses in the US have found for our Issuing infrastructure, and can’t wait to see what our European users build with it.”
Simon Taylor, co-founder of the financial consultancy firm 11:FS said:
“The ability for any business to issue cards to suit its needs is a significant unlock for businesses who want to create and manage their own way of making payments. Everything from creating cards that can only be used for fuel by drivers, to expenses cards inside an e-commerce platform, can be built using simple and easy-to-use tools. By embedding card issuing tools in the Stripe Dashboard and with its infrastructure first approach, these capabilities just became available to Stripe’s already large European customer base. I’m interested to see what Stripe’s customer base will do with these tools.“
