Card Lifecycle Management

Once launching card issuing projects, our customers usually forget that it is a long-term activity that requires constant verification and improvements. It is very important that you understand and manage your card holders and use best practices in card lifecycle management. Let me summarize key activities from a timeline perspective. 

Stage 1 - choosing a card issuing partner

Obvious step. Everybody focuses on financials and technical integration. Very few people check value-added services and other products. Almost no one is aware of PCI DSS & other security requirements that will make your life easier on stage 4 and later ones. Another common mistake is that you do not check the financial stability of your card issuing partner as if it is not important for your business and users. 

Stage 2 - implementation

Obviously important. No comments. Check Dev Zone and implement. Make sure your developers read specs carefully. Make sure you understand AML and KYC regulations so that you can comply with rules and the project can be built on strong fundamentals. A common mistake is not to consider Stage 4 - card lifecycle management processes are forgotten.

Stage 3 - launch 

Everybody focuses on this moment, plans campaigns, distributes cards. And usually this is the last implementation step of this new product. It is a mistake. 

Stage 4 - card lifecycle management

Once you are up and running, it is very important that you are able to monitor your portfolio, create reports, organise personalised campaigns and manage your portfolio in a very active way. There are several rules to follow in order to maximise your portfolio's earnings and performance. The most important ones are summarised below:

• Portfolio Manager - have people that will be responsible for the management of your portfolio. 1 person is enough at the beginning. Make sure these people understand goals and work to make your cardholders active
• Reporting system- make sure you have a flexible reporting system that gives you information not only about the number of issued cards and transactions, but more importantly on the behaviour of various customer groups:
  • have reports how many customers used the card after 1-2 days, be able to find the user IDs
  • have reports with customers that used the card after 5 days, 15 days, 30 days
  • have reports on inactive customer groups
    
• Actions - be ready to act basing on the user behaviour
  • once you see that your customer is not using the card after 1-2 days - send him/her a notification or an educational reminder
  • once you see that the customer is not using the card for 15 days - maybe you should send a small digital gift to the customer and deliver it if he/she starts using card
  • if you see an inactive customer after 30 days - ask them why they are not using the card; maybe you will get a correct feedback
• Reporting - again and again check if your actions work correctly. What is their success rate? How are your customers changing their behaviour? 
• P&L analysis - make a detailed analysis from a financial perspective, incentivise users to do transactions that are bringing more revenue, think of increasing monthly fees for non-active users
  
• Quality reporting - check the quality of your services, ask users for feedback regularly, collect information, analyse it, make actions to improve
• Value-added services - think of launching new services that can improve performance of your portfolio. Maybe a voucher-based ending, card-to-card money transfers, loyalty programs etc. Ask us for best practices and tools that are easy to use.
• Education (super important) - never underestimate the importance of educational messages. You can teach customers how to use the card on the internet, tell them how to tokenise the card in Apple or Google Pay, show them how to pay at ATMs. Card issuers tend to forget how cheap and profitable it is to work on user education. Do not assume that everyone everywhere uses payment cards the way you use them today. People sometimes do not know how to use 3DS, they are afraid to use it, etc. Work on that.
• Learn, change, improve... 

Card issuing is a long-term activity. Please do not think that you will launch it and everything will work properly. You should be constantly working to attract more users and teach existing users how to use the cards so that they add real value to your business. Good luck!

Thanks for reading.