Welcome to the latest edition of Lithic’s product newsletter, where we’ll cover Lithic news, product updates, open roles and new podcast episodes.
10-Year Anniversary Podcast Episode
Lithic started in 2014 as Privacy.com, and we just hit our 10-year anniversary! Our co-founders: Bo Jiang (CEO), Jason Kruse (CTO), and David Nichols (Chief Design Officer) joined the Fintech Layer Cake podcast where they recapped the journey that they’ve been on, what surprised them most in standing up the Privacy.com business, and where they see the business headed. Fun fact: two of our founders met in high school! Check out more about the episode on the Lithic blog.
New Guides 📚
In the last few months, we’ve published a few guides to help fintechs and banks understand the industry and how they can partner with Lithic to achieve some of their most important business goals.
- Embedded Finance 101: This guide dives into the fundamentals of embedded finance, how it works, how card issuing can be an exciting first step in pursuing an embedded finance strategy, and how Lithic can support you on that journey.
- Switching Your Sponsor Bank? Navigating the Complexities of BIN Migrations with Active Cards: Our Head of Compliance, Shawnet Hendricks, explains the two options that card programs with active cards can pursue when looking to switch sponsor banks, and the key considerations that they should think about in each path.
Customer Spotlight 🔦
In this edition, we’re highlighting how Novo, a financial solutions platform geared towards small businesses and freelancers, was able to scale their debit card program with Lithic’s modern card issuing platform. Read more about the growth and innovation that Novo has unlocked by working with Lithic in our case study.
Lithic Product Updates 🚀
We’ve excited to share the latest round of product improvements and new features that we’ve shipped to enable innovation for our card program customers. Here’s a round-up of everything we’ve shipped in the last two months.
Fleet Cards Now Live
We officially launched support for fleet cards: a tailored, secure, and data-rich solution to fleet payments. Businesses looking to manage fuel, maintenance, and other vehicles expenses can now take advantage of Lithic’s technology to deliver a world-class offering, including customized physical cards, enhanced authorization messages, and detailed clearing data (including Level 2 and Level 3 data). Check out our blog post to learn more.
Manage Card Tokenizations Directly via API
With our new Token Management API, card programs can directly manage the lifecycle of card tokenizations with actions such as activating tokens, deactivating tokens, resending activation codes, updating digital card art, and more. This API allows you to manage both digital wallet and merchant tokens, meaning programs have even better tooling to manage potential fraud on tokenized cards and service cardholder requests relating to their tokenized cards. Check out this blog post to learn how you can take advantage of this new functionality.
Enhanced Commercial Data Now Available
We’ve taken our support for commercial payment solutions to a new level, with the addition of enhanced commercial data (also known as Level 2 and Level 3 data) to the API. By accessing this data, card programs can now gain deeper insights into transactions and enable greater control over expenses over time. By clearly structuring this data in JSON objects, and making it available via a modern API and in real-time via webhooks, Lithic makes this data easy to work with for card programs. Learn more about how this data can help you achieve your program’s goals with this blog post.
Card Shipping Detail Webhooks
We’ve made improvements to our webhooks, with additional functionality to indicate when a physical card has been shipped for a customer’s program. We now have parity across our physical card fulfillment partners, meaning all programs issuing physical cards with Lithic are now able to know in real-time when Lithic has been notified that a card has been shipped. Additionally, if tracking information is available for the shipping method used, that data is now also provided in the webhook. Read about the webhook and our Events API to learn more.
KYB Document Upload via API
We’ve made improvements to our KYB offering by enabling automated document uploads. In cases where a KYB application results in a state where additional document review is required, programs can now programmatically receive that status via webhook, upload documents via a dedicated endpoint, and receive another webhook when the document review has been completed. Check out our guides to learn more about what options are available for business account holder creation.
In addition to the above updates, we’re shipping even more fixes and improvements regularly. Check out our changelog for more.
Open Roles 🤩
We are hiring for a few critical roles on the Lithic team, including:
- Staff Software Engineer - Issuing
- Growth Marketing Manager
- Sales Development Representative
- …and more - check out our Careers page!
New Podcast Episodes 🎧
Listen to all of these episodes and more on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
Bank Earnings Takeaways with American Banker Reporter Polo Rocha
In this episode, our host Reggie Young speaks with Polo Rocha, reporter at American Banker. They cover earnings from public banks, lessons and trends in community and regional banks, and key headwinds that banks are facing in 2024.
Watch the interview or read the full transcript here.
Earned Wage Access and Fintech Policy Primer with Ben LaRocco of EarnIn
Reggie is joined by Ben LaRocco. Ben is Senior Director of Government Relations at EarnIn, an earned wage access fintech company. Ben gives a primer on policy, what a policy function is, and how it works. They dive into the current state of earned wage access policy and regulation in the US.
Watch the interview or read the full transcript here.
Building Strong Fintech Partnerships with Nick Rasines of Column
Nick Rasines joins Reggie and Alli Nilsen, Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager at Lithic, for this episode. Nick leads the cards business at Column. Among other topics, they discuss what a partnerships function at a bank does, why it’s important, and common misconceptions that are often encountered in the industry.
Watch the interview or read the full transcript here.
Contrarian Takes on Visa Flex, Fintech VC, and more with Lithic’s Nikil Konduru
Lithic’s own Nikil Konduru, who leads our expansion efforts into new verticals and products, joins Reggie in this episode to talk about the latest in fintech. They talk about the state of fintech venture capital, Visa’s Flex announcement, Visa’s focus on push-to-card, and much, much more.
Watch the interview or read the full transcript here.
In Case You Missed It
Click here to read the May 2024 Product Update.