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The Cards API works with two primary objects: the card product and the card. The card product comes first — you cannot issue a card without naming the product it belongs to. A card product represents a particular card you offer to your customers, bundling together the BIN it is issued on, its physical characteristics, and the features enabled for it. For example, one card product might be “Mastercard consumer debit, physical, contactless, digital wallets enabled, no cross-border.”
Your Synctera Onboarding & Implementation manager sets up your card products based on your requirements and your sponsor bank agreement. Card products are not created through the API — you read them and reference them by ID when issuing cards.

What a card product defines

Card fulfillment providers:
  • ARROWEYE — cards are printed on demand.
  • GD — cards are manufactured in bulk (minimum order), and then personalized on demand.
These card fulfillment providers offer different options when it comes to card material (plastic, metal, etc.). Your Synctera Onboarding & Implementation Manager will help you finalize your card design and provider setup.
The PIN issuance policy controls whether a physical card can be fulfilled before a PIN is set. Virtual cards do not have a PIN issuance policy.NOT_REQUIRED — the default. The card ships without a PIN. A PIN must still be set, but the cardholder can do that after they receive the card.REQUIRED — the card is created with PENDING status and the physical card is not manufactured until a PIN is set with the Set PIN widget. Within a few minutes of the PIN being set, the card moves to UNACTIVATED and fulfillment proceeds. Subscribe to CARD.UPDATED to be notified.RANDOM — the system assigns a random PIN before shipment. The card is created with PENDING status and moves to UNACTIVATED within a few minutes. Once the cardholder receives and activates the card, they can retrieve the PIN with the Reveal PIN widget.

List your card products

Use List Card Products to retrieve every product configured for you, with its full configuration.
Note the id of the product you intend to issue against — that is the card_product_id you pass to Issue a Card.
Card product configuration changes — enabling cross-border transactions, changing the fulfillment provider, adjusting the card limit — go through your Synctera representative, not the API. Check active before issuing: inactive products cannot be used for new cards.