Transferra & Wallester warn card programmes need scaling

Transferra and Wallester said payment firms are shifting their focus from launching card programmes to scaling them. Card issuing projects often take longer than expected because firms underestimate the operational work involved.

Speakers from both companies made the point during a webinar on corporate card programmes, drawing on Transferra's experience as a UK-authorised electronic money institution serving more than 2,000 corporate customers across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Alexey Reshko, Chief Operating Officer at Transferra, said his team initially believed the company could go directly to Visa and Mastercard and launch cards within three to six months because it already held its own licence. That changed after a closer review of what principal membership would involve, including scheme discussions, staffing, budgets and selecting technical providers.

He said principal membership would have required around 12 to 15 months of work before key parts of the system were fully integrated. The challenge, he added, was not limited to card issuing itself but extended to the broader payments setup around it.

"When you actually start the payment journey, you have IBAN providers, transaction monitoring, KYC and KYB solutions, a card issuing project, and you combine everything together," said Alexey Reshko, Chief Operating Officer at Transferra.

"In the end, you have only three hours a week to focus on your card programme. You then realise that the three months you thought it would take do not fit into three hours a week," he said.

Four routes

Transferra assessed four ways to enter the market: principal scheme membership, sponsorship by an existing BIN holder, a white-label programme, and a card API without a white-label layer. Reshko said the final option looked simple at first but did not meet the needs of a business planning to grow.

"You can't scale it anyhow," he said.

The company instead chose a white-label model that would still allow it to move to its own BIN later if needed. Nearly four years later, Reshko said, Transferra remains on that model and sees it as sufficient for its current requirements while preserving flexibility for a future move.

Wallester used the discussion to argue that customer priorities in the market have changed. Karine Martinez, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Wallester, said firms no longer ask simply whether cards can be issued. Instead, they focus on launch speed, operating model, accountability and economics at scale.

"The point is no longer whether we can issue cards. Yes, we can," said Karine Martinez, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Wallester.

"It is how a whole card programme scales," she said.

She added that buyers are more cautious about relying on several providers to build a programme, because each extra supplier brings another integration, another contract and another service-level agreement.

"Every additional provider means a new integration, a new contract, a new SLA and a new potential failure," Martinez said.

Product first

Georgi Prelovski, Senior Client Implementation Manager at Wallester, said the most important work often happens before software integration starts. Firms should decide early which markets and users they want to target, which currencies they need to support, whether cards will be virtual or physical, how customer funds will be loaded and what controls will apply.

That preparation can also include deciding which payment types should be restricted and which digital wallets should be supported. For larger corporate structures, the work can become more complex because onboarding and compliance may differ from one legal entity or jurisdiction to another.

"Before implementation, decide the product. During implementation, build and prepare for the launch," said Georgi Prelovski, Senior Client Implementation Manager at Wallester.

Reshko highlighted that issue for businesses operating across several entities and markets.

"Each company must be onboarded individually, and each jurisdiction brings its own compliance requirements," he said.

AI caution

The discussion also touched on the use of artificial intelligence in anti-money laundering processes. Martinez said automation is improving transaction screening and monitoring, but human specialists still need to assess flagged cases and set the rules behind the systems.

"We are not there yet with agentic AI making payments on our behalf. Working in the payments and cards industry, I would never give my credentials to a conversational AI," she said.