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Synctera Instant Push to Card

Synctera offers InstantPush to Card as an alternative to other payment methods in your payment strategy. This is a convenient method that operates through existing card networks (Visa Direct and Mastercard MoneySend) to speed up funds delivery. This method offers 24/7/365 availability and allows customers to do an instant push of funds from their account to any payment card.
Other names for Instant Push to CardThroughout the payments industry, this payment method is also known as an “Original Credit Transaction” (OCT) or an “instant disbursement”

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Benefits

Adding Synctera Instant Push to Card to your payment stack enables you to:
  • Increase conversions: Make your financial product or FinTech app more attractive to potential customers with immediate access to funds
  • Increase stickiness: Get customers using your product soon after signing up
  • Increase customer satisfaction: Deliver real-time, convenient payment experiences to support growing customer demand

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Use cases

  • P2P transfers (requires FinTech to have an MSB license)
  • Payroll direct deposits to facilitate instant earning access
  • Funds disbursements, e.g. to enable fulfillment of insurance claims or tax refunds
  • Instant bill payments

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Considerations

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Eligibility and supported scenarios

Current support:
  • Domestic transfers with Visa/Mastercard debit cards that are enabled for instant transfer services, which includes most debit cards
  • Commercial and consumerdebit cards
Future support:
  • Cross-border transfers
  • Transfers with credit cards

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Cost/pricing

  • Because you act as a merchant, you pay network fees
  • Network fees are billed monthly
  • You can add a markup / convenience fee for your customers
  • Contact Synctera for detailed pricing

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Limits

Network limits: Consumer cards
Consumer cards
Per transactionN/A
Daily limit per card$10,000
Business cards
Per transactionN/A
Daily limit per card$10,000*
*Can go up to $50,000 based on the use case Processor limits:
Program (Consumer or Business)
Per transactionDefined on FinTech Application with processor*
Daily aggregateDefined on FinTech Application with processor*
*As part of the program application to the processor, FinTech must provide both the average and max transaction amounts, as well as the expected daily total/aggregate amount. These amounts will be setup as limits on the processor side, which means any transaction exceeding those limits will get declined by the processor. The daily aggregate limits responds to the amount that needs to be pre-funded on the account 3 day float … When/how to increase - make sure this is done in time to not interrupt your program (take into consideration the turn-around time at the processor)
Other limitsVelocity limits may also be set by you and/or your sponsor bank. This is particularly important for use cases where the sender and recipient are different.

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Risk management

With correct measures in place, instant push to card transactions are relatively secure. The following fraud prevention mechanism are utilized at different points in the instant transfer lifecycle to reduce fraud: During onboarding:
  • KYC/KYB on account holder(sender)
During linking of external card:
  • Tokenization of card
  • Address Verification Service (AVS) to verify cardholder address (address on card matches address on file)
  • Cardholder name check (name on card matches name on file)
  • For usecases where sender and recipient are different (me-to-you) -for increased account security and recipient authentication, we suggest that you add the following to your app/functionality:
  • Recipient login/password to your app to provide card credentials
  • Two-factor or multi-factor authentication, for example using text or email address on file, for recipient to authenticate before the push to card transaction is processed merchant before disbursement is processed.
During initiation of instant transfer:
  • Check that customer (sender) and account are in good standing
  • Limit checks
  • Check fraud rules
  • OFAC check
  • Eligibility check
Ongoing:
  • Monitoring of account and transaction activity
  • Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program

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Chargebacks

  • Not relevant as push to card transactions are considered final

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Flow of funds

Prerequisites:
  • FinTech customer (sender) has been onboarded on the Synctera platform and passed KYC/KYB
  • Recipienthas successfully added/linked their external card
Instant Push to Card
Funds for Instant Push to Card are collected from an FBO settlement account at the acquiring bank. You are required to prefund this account to eliminate any issues with the settlement the next morning (good funds model). Initially, prefund the account for at least your forecasted daily total amount of Instant Push to Card. The ACH push from Synctera (step 10 in the diagram above) will keep the account replenished. However, consider keeping additional funds to cover weekends and holidays.

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How to get started

For a summary of what you need to do to get set up with Synctera Instant Push to Card, see the FinTech Launch Checklist.