This guide follows the virtual-first pattern Synctera recommends. Your customer gets a virtual card they can use the moment onboarding completes, and a physical card arrives a few days later.
The curl examples assume you have set up baseurl and apikey environment variables. See Base URL and Authentication. Identifiers produced by earlier steps are written like {ACCOUNT_ID}.
What you are building
Step 1 — Create and verify the customer
Create a personal customer and run KYC. The customer must reach a verification_status of ACCEPTED before they can hold an account or use a card.
See Create a Personal Customer and KYC/KYB Verification.
Record the disclosures your program requires as part of onboarding — typically the USA Patriot Act notice, E-Sign consent, the privacy notice, and your deposit account agreement. See Record Disclosure Acceptance.
We refer to the resulting person’s UUID as {CUSTOMER_ID}.
Step 2 — Create an account template
The template defines the shape of every checking account you open for this program. Cards must be enabled on it.
Note the returned id — we refer to it as {ACCOUNT_TEMPLATE_ID}.
You only build the template once, not once per customer. If you want every account in this program to carry the same spending limits or fee structure, attach a spend_control_id and a fee product to the template now — accounts inherit them at creation. See Spend Controls and Fees and Rewards. Step 3 — Create the account
Create the checking account from the template, with the customer as its holder. See Create Accounts for the full request and for account relationships.
We refer to the resulting account’s UUID as {ACCOUNT_ID}.
Step 4 — Find your card product
List your card products and pick the debit product you intend to issue against. You need one product per form — a virtual product and a physical product.
Check that active is true, and note the id of each. We refer to them as {VIRTUAL_CARD_PRODUCT_ID} and {PHYSICAL_CARD_PRODUCT_ID}. See Card Products for what each field on the product controls.
Step 5 — Issue a virtual card
Issue the virtual card as the last step of onboarding, so the customer can spend immediately.
Virtual cards activate automatically — the card comes back ACTIVE, with no activation step.
Show the card details to the customer with the Reveal Card widget, and prompt them to set a PIN with the Set PIN widget. A PIN matters even for a virtual card: a merchant point of sale can request one when the card is used through a digital wallet, and without a PIN set that purchase cannot complete.
Then prompt the customer to add the card to Apple Pay or Google Wallet. See Digital Wallets.
Step 6 — Issue a physical card
If you omit emboss_name, the card is embossed with the customer’s first and last name. If you omit shipping.address, the card goes to the customer’s shipping address on file.
For customers who have specified a chosen name, set emboss_name explicitly with their chosen and last name rather than relying on the default.
Step 7 — Track fulfillment
Subscribe to CARD.* webhooks. You receive CARD.CREATED on issuance and CARD.UPDATED as the card moves through ORDERED, SHIPPED, and any rejection, which is what you need to keep the customer informed. See the Webhooks guide.
If the card comes back PENDING rather than progressing, read status.pending_reasons — a card product with a REQUIRED PIN issuance policy holds the card until a PIN is set.
Step 8 — Activate the physical card
When the card arrives, the customer proves possession. Which method you use depends on what is printed on the card:
- Full PAN and CVV printed — use the Activate Card widget.
- No PAN or partial PAN — have the customer scan the barcode and send its value to Activate Card.
- Neither — set the card to
ACTIVE with Update Card, having done your own due diligence to authenticate the customer.
See Activate a card for the details and trade-offs.
The physical card keeps the PIN the customer already set on the virtual card only if the physical card was issued as a reissuance of it. Issued independently, as here, it needs its own PIN — prompt for one at activation.
Step 9 — Run the program
From here the card is live. The rest of the lifecycle is covered in Issue and Manage Cards:
- Lock and unlock a card when a customer misplaces it
- Reissue on expiration, loss, theft, or damage
- Terminate when the customer closes the card
Set up expiration reissuance early. Use List Cards with the expires_before filter to find cards approaching expiry, and reissue them with EXPIRATION before the date arrives — the replacement keeps the same PAN and PIN, and inherits the customer’s digital wallet tokens, so the customer notices nothing. 
