Stripe Issuing launches in 20 countries across Europe

By Megha Bhattacharya

Stripe has announced the launch of Stripe Issuing in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. The solution will enable users to develop, manage and distribute virtual and physical payment cards. The company stated that cards created on the solution can be programmatically controlled, with dynamic spending limits, blocked merchant categories, advanced combinations of rules, and even real-time authorisations for each transaction, all managed via the company’s Issuing API.

Stripe’s EMEA Business Lead Matt Henderson said, “Creating and distributing new cards in Europe has long been so complex and opaque that only a handful of companies could ever justify doing it. Today, we’re making it fast, simple, and secure. It used to take months to create and ship new cards in Europe. With Stripe Issuing, it now takes two days. We’ve been astonished by the breadth of use cases businesses in the US have found for our Issuing infrastructure, and can’t wait to see what our European users build with it.”

According to Stripe, businesses can design their own branded cards in the Stripe Dashboard, with Stripe handling card production, fulfilment, and shipping. Virtual cards can be created instantly, and physical cards are shipped in just two business days.

Simon Taylor, co-founder of the financial consultancy firm 11:FS said, “The ability for any business to issue cards to suit its needs is a significant unlock for businesses who want to create and manage their own way of making payments. Everything from creating cards that can only be used for fuel by drivers, to expenses cards inside an e-commerce platform, can be built using simple and easy-to-use tools. By embedding card issuing tools in the Stripe Dashboard and with its infrastructure first approach, these capabilities just became available to Stripe’s already large European customer base. I’m interested to see what Stripe’s customer base will do with these tools.“