Cards management

The Pismo platform offers you many different types of cards (credit, debit, prepaid, private label, and more) you can issue. These cards allow transactions to occur in almost all conceivable locations and circumstances - retail stores, online e-commerce, ATM withdrawals, recurring subscriptions, and so on.

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Getting started with card issuing

Refer to the Get started with card issuing guide.

Every card is associated with a single customer and account. Accounts can have multiple customers, typically to accommodate primary and additional cardholders, but only one owner. Customers can also have more than one account.

Pismo infrastructure handles all card information including sensitive data, which is stored in a dedicated, secure and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant environment.

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PCI endpoints

Certain endpoints are designated PCI endpoints and should be called in a PCI environment. For more information, refer to Environments and, specifically, PCI vs non-PCI endpoints.

Pismo enables you to:

• Choose card types that best suit your customers' needs.
• Customize a card’s attributes, behaviors, and lifecycle, including limits on spending, the number of card uses, and the number of active cards.
• Work with the card embosser of your choice.
• Tokenize card data for use in a digital wallet.

Card data

Cards store the data necessary to complete a merchant transaction. In the table below, the expiration date and name are not considered sensitive PCI data.

The PIN, PAN, and expiration date are automatically generated at card creation time.

You can call the following API endpoints for a card's PIN:

• Get card password
• Change card password
• Reset password try count
• Get PIN as PINBlock
• Update PIN from PINBlock

Card types

Pismo offers the following card types.

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CVV rotation for virtual cards

The logic for virtual card CVV rotation belongs to Pismo. The card networks are not updated every time this happens. This might impact scenarios where the card network validates the CVV before sending a transaction to Pismo.

Configuring temporary cards

As stated in the table above, temporary cards are virtual cards with a fixed PAN and CVV originally meant for short-term use, typically 24 hours (default). By default, it is also renewable.

Through Pismo Control Center program parameter configuration, you can define:

• Validity period (in hours) for temporary cards. The default is 24, but can be configured differently.
• Transactions limit for temporary cards. Only authorized transactions are counted.
• Skip auto-renewal for temporary cards.

Temporary card renewal

Only temporary cards can have an INOPERATIVE status, which occurs automatically when the validity period expires. You can call the Get PCI card info endpoint to renew it. However, the following applies if you do this:

• If the "Skip auto-renewal for temporary cards" program parameter is true, the card is not renewed. In this case, the card's status becomes permanently INOPERATIVE.
• If the Skip parameter is false (default), then the card is renewed. In this case, the card's status becomes NORMAL.

Note: A temporary card's validity date is different from a card's expiration date. The expiration date applies to all card types—only temporary cards have a validity date.

Branded and private label cards

You need to contact your Pismo representative to set up branded and private label cards.

• Branded—Visa and Mastercard cards that allow customers to make purchases at all establishments accepting these brands.

• Private label—For companies seeking customer loyalty, private label cards are a good option as you can provide benefits such as discounts and better payment terms. They are usually only accepted at stores in the same network. With a private label, it is possible to control and monitor issuer transactions.

Create a combination card with card modes

You can use a combination card for both debit and credit transactions. What makes this possible are modes . A card can have a credit mode or a debit mode or both (combination cards). A mode is derived from a program/account, which can be either credit or debit.

A card's initial mode comes from the program/account it is issued with but, if you create a card with the parameter mode_type set to COMBO, you can add an additional mode to the card with the Add card mode API endpoint at a later time to create a combination card.

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Removing a card mode

A card mode can't be removed, but it can be suspended and made inactive with the Change card mode status endpoint.

Mode object

A card mode has an object and an identifier:

{
  "modes": [
    {
      "id": 128876,
      "mode": "CREDIT",
      "program_id": 88490,
      "customer_id": 102377856,
      "account_id": 102378693,
      "password_tries": 3,
      "transaction_limit": 750.05,
      "number_of_transactions": 40,
      "status": "SUSPENDED",
      "card_owner": "TN-f878e4a1-2879-48ba-be16-821e73ac98db"
    }
  ]
}

Card mode API endpoints

The following endpoints pertain to modes:

• Create card—Issue a card setting mode parameters.
• Add card mode—Add a mode (credit or debit account) to a card.
• Get card modes—Get information about a specific card's modes. Each mode has an ID and an object.
• Change card mode status—Change a card mode's status - active or suspended.

Digital wallets - Pismo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and others

Cards you issue through Pismo can be stored in digital wallets, which let you tokenize cards and use them for payments without exposing sensitive data such as the CVV or PAN. Pismo provides its own digital wallet and supports those of other payment apps like Samsung Pay or Google Pay.

For more information refer to:

• Pismo digital wallet
• Third-party wallets (such as Apple Pay)

Mastercard's Automatic Billing Updater option

For a Mastercard card, you have the option to enable their Automatic Billing Updater (ABU) feature. When account credentials change, it’s challenging for consumers to inform all of their merchants. As a result, their card-not-present payments may be declined. This creates service disruptions for consumers, as well as lost revenue and decreased customer loyalty for merchants.

When a card is created, reissued, or a card's account credentials change, such as the card being lost, stolen, or closed, Pismo automatically notifies Mastercard if this feature is enabled. Mastercard, in turn, notifies the merchants it has on file for that card. Update notifications are sent to Mastercard on a daily basis.

To enable ABU for a program, create a Service Desk ticket with request type = Settings/Configuration.

You can disable ABU for a card via the following API endpoint:

• Update card information

For more information, refer to Mastercard's Automatic Billing Updater documentation.