Managing Physical Cards

The Marqeta platform enables you to issue physical cards individually or in bulk. This guide provides an overview of the available card fulfillment options, including best practices for each card fulfillment type. At the end of this guide, you should understand:

• How to issue physical cards, individually or in bulk.
• Best practices for issuing physical cards.
• How the card ordering process works for each fulfillment provider.
• How to track and understand the status of your physical card orders.

For an overview of payment cards on the Marqeta platform, see About Cards. For information about the /cards resource in the Marqeta Core API, see Cards.

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About card fulfillment types

There are four types of physical card fulfillment: full-service mail, full-service bulk, dynamic bulk, and generic bulk. The following sections describe each fulfillment type.

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Full-service mail

Full-service mail card fulfillment is appropriate for individual cardholders. Cardholders receive their own personalized cards in the mail at the addresses associated with their user accounts. Full-service mail is the default card fulfillment type for most card programs. See Configuring full-service mail card fulfillment for more information.

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Full-service bulk

Full-service bulk card fulfillment is appropriate when your business is the cardholder, and cards are distributed to your authorized users. Cards are shipped in individually identified envelopes to a single address, such as your business address, and you distribute them to your authorized users. Cards and envelopes are identified with the authorized user’s name. See Configuring full-service bulk card fulfillment for more information.

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Bulk

Bulk card fulfillment supports two variants: generic bulk card fulfillment and dynamic bulk card fulfillment. The following sections describe each type.

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Generic

Generic bulk card fulfillment is appropriate when you want to have cards in stock to distribute to your authorized users. Cards are shipped in bulk boxes without individual envelopes. Rather than an individual’s name, cards are printed or embossed with a static prefix followed by a serial enumeration, such as “Driver 01,” “Driver 02,” and so on. See Configuring generic bulk card fulfillment for more information.

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Dynamic

Dynamic bulk card fulfillment enables you to create a standing bulk card order to which you can add individual cards on an ongoing basis. Dynamic bulk card fulfillment is appropriate when you want to have more control over individual card details, such as assigning specific user tokens. See Configuring dynamic bulk card fulfillment for more information.

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Fulfillment providers by location

When you create your card product, you specify your fulfillment provider in the fulfillment_provider field of the config.fulfillment object, as described in the Card Products page. You can work with fulfillment providers located in North America, Europe, South America, and the Asia-Pacific region. The tables below list the available fulfillment providers and their locations.

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North America

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Europe

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South America

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Asia-Pacific region

For more information about creating your card product and the fulfillment_provider field, see Card Products.

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Configuring full-service mail card fulfillment

To configure an individual card for full-service mail card fulfillment, follow these steps:

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Step one — Create your card product

Create your card product as documented on the Card Products page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step two — Create your users

Create your users as documented on the Users page, ensuring that you specify each user’s shipping address. The following body fields are required:

• first_name
• last_name
• address1
• city
• state (USA only)
• postal_code
• country

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Step three — Create your cards

Create your cards as documented on the Cards page, ensuring that you specify the required user_token and fulfillment.card_personalization.text objects. Optionally, you can also specify the card carrier design in the fulfillment.card_personalization.carrier object. The card carrier is the trifold paper to which the card is affixed for shipment.

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Configuring full-service bulk card fulfillment

To configure cards for full-service bulk card fulfillment, follow these steps:

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Step one — Create your card product

Create your card product as documented on the Card Products page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step two — Create your users

Create your users as documented on the Users API reference page. Entering the user’s address is optional, unless your users require Know Your Customer (KYC) validation. Your fulfillment provider ships the cards to the bulk recipient address you specify in your bulk card order.

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Step three — Create your bulk card order

Create your bulk card order as specified on the Bulk Card Orders page, ensuring that you specify your bulk shipping address in the fulfillment.shipping.recipient_address object. The following body fields are required:

• first_name
• last_name
• address1
• city
• state (USA only)
• postal_code
• country

Optionally, you can also specify the card carrier design in the fulfillment.card_personalization.carrier object. The card carrier is the trifold paper to which the card is affixed for shipment.

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Configuring generic bulk card fulfillment

For generic bulk card fulfillment, you configure a bulk order that creates generic users and cards. You can update the generic users with user-specific information, such as their name and address, after the bulk card order has been created. To configure cards for generic bulk card fulfillment, follow these steps:

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Step one — Create your card product

Create your card product as documented on the Card Products page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step two — Create your bulk card order

Create your bulk card order as specified on the Bulk Card Orders page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step three — Update your generic users

After you have created your bulk card order, you can enter individual user information for your generic cards by updating the relevant user as documented on the Users API reference page. Use the PUT method to update a generic user, such as /users/{user-01}, with the relevant information, such as the user’s name and address.

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Configuring dynamic bulk card fulfillment

For dynamic bulk card fulfillment, you create a bulk card order with an allocation of 0 as a placeholder, then create users and cards that you add to your bulk order dynamically. To configure cards for dynamic bulk card fulfillment, follow these steps:

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Step one — Create your card product

Create your card product as documented on the Card Products page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step two — Create your bulk card order

Create your bulk card order as specified on the Bulk Card Orders page, ensuring that you specify the following items:

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Step three — Create your authorized users

Create your users, as documented on the Users API reference page.

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Step four — Create your cards

Create your cards as documented on the Cards page, ensuring that you enter the required user_token and fulfillment.card_personalization.text objects.

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Ordering cards

Physical cards are automatically ordered upon card issuance if the following conditions are met:

• The card product has a defined physical type in the payment_instrument field in the config.fulfillment object
• The config.fulfillment object has both a valid fulfillment provider and a valid fulfillment package ID
• The card is in the ISSUED or REISSUED state
• The card has not yet been manufactured

If these conditions have been met, then the card is added to the fulfillment queue. Fulfillment cutoff times vary according to your fulfillment provider:

• For Perfect Plastic Printing and Arroweye Solutions, the cutoff time is 09:00 UTC.
• For IDEMIA, the cutoff time is 23:00 UTC.

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Cancelling card orders

If your card order has not entered the fulfillment queue yet, you can transition the card to the TERMINATED state to cancel the order. For information about transitioning cards to different states, see Create card transition. If your card order is in the fulfillment queue, you must contact Marqeta Support to determine whether your order can be cancelled.

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Reordering cards

If your card order fails and is in the REJECTED state, you must create a new card for that user. If you want to use the same primary account number (PAN) for the new card, you can reissue the PAN from the existing card token. For more details about reissuing a PAN, see the reissue_pan_from_card_token body field details on the Cards API reference page.

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Fulfillment status

When a card is fulfilled, the fulfillment_status and state_reason fields of the card object are updated. You can send a GET request to /cards/{token} to see these fields. Marqeta sends a webhook request for each transition that occurs for a given card. Each fulfillment provider offers different shipping options for physical cards. If you choose a shipping option that offers a tracking number, such as UPS or FedEx, the tracking number will appear in the state_reason field of your card order. Be aware that most US Postal Service shipping options do not offer a tracking number. Card fulfillment usually follows this timeline: