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View Cards

List Cards returns the cards you have issued. Filter by customer, account, embossed name, last four digits, expiration date, card type, brand, form, card product, and cardholder postal code, and sort by expiration date. Get Card returns a single card by ID.

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View Card History

Subscribe to CARD.UPDATED webhooks to receive every change as it happens, and use Get Card to read the current state.

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Reset a PIN

Cardholders forget PINs. Have them set a new one with the Set PIN widget, or use Set Card PIN if you are PCI certified — the same mechanism that sets the initial PIN. timestamp_pin_set records when the PIN last changed.
If the card was suspended after too many incorrect PIN attempts, resetting the PIN is only half the fix. The card also has to be returned to ACTIVE. See Reset PIN Tries.

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Reset PIN Tries

If someone enters a card’s PIN incorrectly too many times in a short period — typically at an ATM or point-of-sale device — the card vendor suspends the card. Its status becomes SUSPENDED and the cardholder will most likely contact you. There are three courses of action:
  • If fraud occurred, reissue the card. This resets the PIN tries on the new card.
  • If the customer has forgotten their PIN, have them reset it with the Set PIN widget, then set the card back to ACTIVE.
  • If the customer remembers their PIN correctly, set the card back to ACTIVE.
You can also handle status changes and reissuance through the Synctera dashboard when a support agent is working with the customer.

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Lock and Unlock a Card

Customers often want to temporarily disable a card — a misplaced wallet, a suspicious charge they want to investigate. Suspend the card with Update Card and reactivate it the same way:
Unlike termination, suspension is reversible. Use reason to record why the status changed and memo for free-text detail.

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Reissue a Card

A card may be reissued because it is expiring, was lost or stolen or damaged, or needs to change appearance or program. You reissue by calling Issue a Card with reissued_from_id set to the card being replaced and reissue_reason set to why. The reason determines whether the replacement keeps the same PAN, and when the old card is terminated: In every case the replacement card gets a new CVV and expiration date, keeps the same PIN as the original, and inherits its digital wallet tokens — cardholders do not need to re-add the card to Apple Pay or Google Pay. Cards already on file with merchants are updated automatically too. Synctera terminates the old card at the right moment for you. For reasons that terminate on activation, the old card stays usable until the replacement is activated or its expiration date arrives, so the customer is never without a working card.
Automating expiration reissuance. Use List Cards with the expires_before filter, or sort by expiration_date, to find cards that are about to expire. From there you can run a background job that reissues them without customer interaction, or prompt the customer through a reissuance flow where they confirm the shipping address. An expiration reissuance must be requested before the actual expiration date.

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Terminate a Card

Set the card’s status to TERMINATED with Update Card:
cURL
Synctera notifies the card vendor, which terminates the card. Termination is permanent — a terminated card cannot be reactivated. If the customer needs a working card afterward, issue a new one.

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Next Steps

Card Lifecycle

The states a card moves through, and what drives them.

Issue a Card

Prerequisites, issuance, activation, and setting a PIN.

A Typical Card Workflow

One card followed end to end, with the calls at each step.