What bothers most loan providers, cost-wise, usually isn’t the credit itself but everything that happens around it.
It can be client onboarding, verification, and compliance checks. Or disbursement coordination and payment reconciliation. Then there’s customer support. The list goes on. The problem is, none of these processes generate revenue, but they do consume time, money, and headcount.
More and more loan providers are trying to find a way around these inadequate workflows. And one way around it has to do with card issuing. In particular, lenders are increasingly adopting embedded and automated card issuing – where cards can be created, loaded, and managed without too much human involvement and manual labour.
In short, by embedding card issuing directly into their products, lenders are now treating cards as a structural cost-cutting tool and not just a value-added feature.
Where the Costs Come From
Using traditional methods like bank transfers or manual card distribution might be well-established practice, but it involves multiple steps: logging the request, verifying limits, creating accounts, issuing the card, sending credentials, confirming delivery. All of this is often done with manual oversight and, needless to say, each step introduces room for error. So mistakes happen. And they result in delays, failed transactions, and the support ticket pile getting higher and higher.
Even when things go smoothly, the process still requires staff. One person has to approve the disbursement. Another checks if the card has been activated. Someone else reviews the transactions that don’t feel right. For obvious reasons, these costs don’t scale well, especially when your disbursement team is dealing with dozens of clients a day.
What Automation Actually Means
Automated card issuing workflows, on the other hand, reduce room for error. For example, instead of having to issue cards one at a time manually – often in collaboration with some external provider – lenders can use an API to instantly generate cards at scale by themselves. This can be done for every borrower, project, or funding cycle.
You save time by doing so because there’s no need to check if a card was actually issued. Also, no one has to manually deal with top-ups, and no one has to monitor whether the limits have been applied or merchant categories allowed. That’s all defined in the setup itself.
And of course, all of this is handled in real time, with predefined rules based on the lender’s risk policy and product logic.
Reduced Support Load
The benefits of embedding card issuing features into apps are typically felt most quickly in the form of reduced customer support costs. A failed transfer, a card not working, or one getting lost can quickly lead to a call, an email, or a helpdesk ticket. Multiply that across thousands of loans, and you can easily imagine where it’s headed.
With automated issuing, borrowers receive a ready-to-use virtual or physical card, often already tokenised and available in their mobile wallets. Because all controls are enforced at the infrastructure level, users see fewer issues. And if something goes wrong anyway, the problem is easier to diagnose.
Infrastructure That Grows With You
A less obvious but crucial benefit of automated card issuing is scalability. Manual processes tend to break down as volume increases. A team that handles 100 disbursements a week probably won’t be able to handle 1,000 without growing in size.
With automated card issuing, though, the cost doesn’t grow linearly with volume. Whether you’re issuing 100 or 10,000 cards, the process remains pretty much the same. That allows lenders to expand into new segments, launch new products, or pilot new business models without needing to hire, retrain, or restructure internal teams.
How Wallester White-Label Helps
Wallester White-Label gives lenders everything they need to launch and scale an embedded, fully automated card issuing programme – no need to build from scratch or rely on external vendors.
You get:
- Branded Visa cards (virtual and physical), ready to use in mobile wallets
- Full control over card parameters – set limits, expiry dates, and per-card rules
- Real-time issuing and transaction visibility – via a clean API and live dashboards
- Automated workflows – no need for manual top-ups, approvals, or card activation follow-ups
- Scalable infrastructure – same setup whether you’re issuing 100 cards or 10,000
- End-to-end compliance – PCI DSS, PSD2, GDPR, 3DS, and full KYC-ready toolkit
- Fast deployment – most clients launch in 8 to 12 weeks
This isn’t a patchwork of third-party tools. It’s a full-stack platform designed to help lenders cut costs, scale faster, and stay in control.
