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Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

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Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#211

Post by anonytrary »

dsnuh wrote: post #210
anonytrary wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, by issuer do you mean "Visa", "MasterCard", etc.? Because there are only a handful of those. > Plus, the population that is eligible for credit doesn't equal total population of the planet. True, I'm talking about a hypothetical "maximal usage" future.

There may be only a handful that are well known, but that doesn't mean that there aren't more possible issuer numbers available. The first six digits make up the issuer identifier, so there are 10^6 possible issuers. Sure, it's not ipv6 level address space (2^128), but ~10,000,000,000,000,000 possible card numbers seems like it should last many lifetimes, especially if you consider that card numbers could be recycled…

If the first 6 digits make up the issuer, since there are only 10 remaining digits, wouldn't that mean there are only 10^10 numbers per issuer? Where's the other factor of 100 coming from (IIRC, OP said there were 10^12)?

> My guess is the credit card itself as a concept will be long gone before the numbers are all used up.

I agree. Products like "privacy.com" hint that we could be approaching a "new number per purchase" meta. Even in that edge-case, if one million issuers get to have 10 billion numbers each, that would leave tens of concurrent purchases per person per issuer for an issuer with a billion users. A monopoly-level media site that lets you open a paid-subscription to multiple people could easily end up needing tens of concurrent cards per user. It seems like issuer-to-issuer number recycling would be required for sure.

Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#212

Post by stolsvik »

What's in it for them? Where's the business model for Stripe?

I find it extremely annoying that companies - any company - just can't be totally upfront about this.

"We earn money from this by you having to fund these cards using an account you must have with us, where we get interests. Also by the merchants where the card is used, which have to pay from 1,5% to 3,5% in processing fees" etc.

Shouldn't be too hard - I guess they already have this in some PowerPoint laying around.

Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#213

Post by farahday »

pbreit wrote: post #40
no1youknowz wrote: post #28

So the question then begs. Is this the beginnings of a digital bank? Will they start to do things like: - Virtual Accounts / Ledger support. - Micro Loans. There doesn't seem to be a digital bank that does end to end payments in the US, that businesses can plug into with an API and have everything taken care of. There is Railsbank[0], yet they are located in the UK and US support may be in Q4 this year. But they aren…

Have a look at: https://openplatformbbva.com https://synapsefi.com https://www.marqeta.com

I would also add Thought Machine with their Vault OS product, looks interesting.

Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#214

Post by oldandlesswise »

this is really cool and I have a couple of good ideas about how I could use this. Question is - how much does it cost for the card? Minimum volumes ?

When a card is issued - do we get the card number back? e.g Could I use the card number for something else like a loyalty card.

Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#216

Post by dsnuh »

anonytrary wrote: post #211
dsnuh wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be only a handful that are well known, but that doesn't mean that there aren't more possible issuer numbers available. The first six digits make up the issuer identifier, so there are 10^6 possible issuers. Sure, it's not ipv6 level address space (2^128), but ~10,000,000,000,000,000 possible card numbers seems like it should last many lifetimes, especially if you consider that card numbers could be recycled…

If the first 6 digits make up the issuer, since there are only 10 remaining digits, wouldn't that mean there are only 10^10 numbers per issuer? Where's the other factor of 100 coming from (IIRC, OP said there were 10^12)? > My guess is the credit card itself as a concept will be long gone before the numbers are all used up. I agree. Products like "privacy.com" hint that we could be approaching a "new number per purch…

You're right, I added an extra zero. It's one trillion numbers per issuer.

Credit card is 18 digits, which is where the 10^12 comes from.

Re: Stripe Issuing – An API for creating physical and virtual cards

#217

Post by toadal »

tluyben2 wrote: post #202
paloaltokid wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost - Marqeta’s offering is more advanced and mature. I don’t doubt that this is causing some waves there though. Stripe is now a very serious competitor of theirs.

Marqeta is US only currently; they say end of the year maybe EU. They have not been very helpful so far either; when talking with them, it feels like talking to a huge, stodgy bank.

They are in the US, Canada and I know they are in Europe. Will launch in a few months because we are working with them. They're awesome.
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