Ranking of card issuing companies

How to choose a BIN sponsor and card issuing partner?

Choosing a BIN sponsor or card issuer is a difficult decision for many partners. Most of our partners do not come from the payment card business, so they learn by doing. In this chapter, we are going to describe the key decision factors of choosing a card issuer and make a simple ranking that we will be upgrading and updating in the coming months and years, as not all information is available to us immediately. On purpose, we will not compare other companies to us, it would not be fair to include Verestro - our goal is to educate in this article.

There are the following key decision factors in choosing a card issuing partner:

1. REVENUE SHARE - Cards issued for my users bring various revenue streams. Are they shared with me? 

2. COSTS - Obvious point.

3. FUNCTIONALITY & SERVICE - a very important point. Critical in the long run. 

    • Does the partner have mandatory functionalities?
    • Does the partner offer currencies that I need for my users?
    • What are other products that can increase usability or profit that the partner offers?
      • Maybe a loyalty program?
      • Any insurance offers and additional benefits that could be sold to customers?
      • Perhaps invoice scanning and expense management? 
      • Maybe white label solutions?
      • Card reload mechanisms?
      • Payouts to cards?
      • etc.
    • Does the partner offer quick access to a developer zone or a test environment? 
    • Does the partner make their APIs public?

3. SECURITY AND FINANCIAL STABILITY - a critical point. Maybe it should be the first one.

Here's an initial comparison of the best known card issuers in the European Union (grades: low - high):

Name Country Revenue Share Costs Functionality & Service Security & Financial Stability
Treezor.com France Medium High Medium Medium
Swan.io Denmark Medium High Medium Medium
Dipocket.org Lithuania High Medium Low Low
Solarisgroup.com Germany Medium High Medium Medium
Wallester.com Estonia Medium Medium High Medium
Stripe USA Low High High High
Weavr.io Malta Medium Medium Low Medium
Verestro Poland Make your own assessment Make your own assessment Make your own assessment Make your own assessment

Source: Financial Stability results based on 2022 or 2023 results available in Internet; all other data from publicly available sources. Please make your own assessment.


Revision #5
Created 10 April 2024 04:50:39 by Krzysztof Drzyzga
Updated 18 April 2024 05:08:55 by Krzysztof Drzyzga