Stripe Issuing launches in Europe

Stripe has launched Stripe Issuing in Europe to enable its users to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical payment cards.

According to the press release, the solution 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 comes to offer businesses more control over how they spend their money. 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, Stripe Issuing puts businesses in complete control of how, where, and when their money is spent.

Moreover, 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.

Besides, businesses can design their own branded cards in the Stripe Dashboard, with Stripe handling card production, fulfilment, and shipping. Virtual cards can be created instantly, and physical cards are shipped in just two business days.

Overall, 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.