Integrated issuing
Cross River integrated issuing solution
Integrated Issuing lets partners use Cross River's infrastructure to launch and manage card programs [1]. This model is perfect for partners who want a convenient way to offer cards without dealing with complex operations.
- Cross River acts as the issuing bank, keeps the records, and authorizes transactions. Cross River handles core banking, compliance, and network operations.
- Partners focus on customer experience and developing their applications
[1] This is subject to due diligence review and at in the sole discretion of Cross River
What we offer
As with the Partner-managed framework, Cross River acts as the issuing bank, providing BIN sponsorship, banking oversight, guidance to maintain best practices, compliance support, and network settlement. Cross River also provides regulatory expertise and operational support. In addition, Cross River provides the technology infrastructure for card processing, relieving the Partner of the need to find and integrate with a separate third party for this purpose.
Cross River's role
Banking and program oversight
As the issuing bank, Cross River provides:
- BIN sponsorship: As a Principal member, Cross River sponsors the use of its Bank Identification Numbers (BINs), enabling partners to issue cards without needing direct membership with Visa or Mastercard. Cross River has been assigned BINs that can be used to sponsor our partners’ card programs that they extend to their customers.
- Oversight: Cross River ensures that card programs comply with Visa, Mastercard, and federal/state banking regulations through initial program evaluation and ongoing oversight.
- Network settlement and reporting: Cross River monitors program activity through review of daily files, transaction monitoring reports, and exception handling processes to maintain operational integrity. Cross River manages network settlement with Visa and Mastercard.
Technical infrastructure
Cross River powers the technical foundation for card programs:
- Issuer processor: Cross River has an issuing processing solution called P1 that relays authorization requests and transaction messages between card networks and Cross River Operating System (COS).
- Ledger management: COS maintains ledgers for customer accounts, card balances, and transaction history.
- Transaction authorization: Cross River offer two authorization models:
- Traditional authorization: COS applies real-time decisioning based on card status, available balance, program rules, and fraud controls.
- Advanced authorization: Cross River’s advanced authorization capability allows partners using the Integrated Issuing model to actively participate in the real-time decision-making process for card transactions. This opens up opportunities to reduce declines, improve user experience, and support alternative funding models while Cross River retains regulatory and network compliance oversight.
- Online authentication: The 3D Secure (3DS) authentication system provides an additional security layer for card-not-present transactions through Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). The system supports both rules-based decisioning and multiple authentication methods to verify cardholder identity during online purchases.
- Digital wallet tokenization: We offer digital wallets which securely stores payment information and credentials for electronic transactions. You don't need physical cards. We also offer Merchant tokenization which differs from digital wallet tokenization in one key way. Digital wallet tokenization starts when a user adds a card to a wallet. Merchant tokenization is driven by the merchant when a user saves their card on file for future use.
- Card network connectivity: Cross River connects with Visa and Mastercard via supported processors to ensure authorized transactions are processed and settled correctly.
- Card lifecycle management: COS support full card lifecycle management, enabling partners to control operations via COS APIs and web-based UI COS Explorer. WebhookWebhook integrations enable real-time event-driven updates for card lifecycle events, transaction activity, and status changes.
Partner's role
In the Integrated Issuing model, the partner’s role is streamlined. Cross River manages the majority of operational, compliance, and technical infrastructure, including ledgering, transaction authorization, processor integration, and network settlement. This allows the partner to focus primarily on building the customer experience.
- Customer experience and application development: The partner is responsible for designing and maintaining the end-user interface, customer onboarding flows, and any custom logic for delivering card features within their application. Partners integrate with COS APIs to create and manage card accounts, monitor status, and trigger lifecycle actions (e.g., replace, suspend) [1].
Find out more
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