Credit Startup Deserve Launches Card Platform

Credit card startup Deserve has debuted what it calls a first-of-its-kind platform that lets banks and B2B companies launch corporate credit and charge cards.

“A recent study from the Mercator Advisory Group found that small businesses will drive more than $700 billion in credit card transactions by 2023,” the company said in a news release Tuesday (April 12). “Deserve’s platform will help more financial institutions and other platforms to more easily issue commercial credit cards for these transactions.”

Deserve said its platform is designed for companies of all sizes, letting them create cards for business customers and offer services such as instant issuance and digital wallet provisioning, which lets cardholders use their cards within minutes. Deserve also provides enterprise-level controls, making it easy for finance teams to track, manage and understand expenses.

“We are extending our digital, cloud-native, mobile-first platform from consumer cards to commercial,” Kalpesh Kapadia, CEO and co-founder of Deserve, said in the release. “With this, we will enable any financial institution or platform that serves other businesses to embed and issue commercial credit cards. For non-banks, this can be a significant source of revenue and can enhance brand loyalty.”

The platform also offers instant issuing, configurable underwriting, business owner control over employee card assignments and employee spending. Deserve said its partners can launch cards in a matter of months and through a single contract.

“When we were approached by Deserve about partnering to help bring this innovative new platform to the small business sector, we could not pass up the opportunity,” said Sam Sidhu, president and CEO of Customers Bank, the first bank to sign up for the new offering.

See also: Visa Backs Credit-Card-As-A-Service Startup Deserve

Launched in 2013 in Silicon Valley, Deserve transforms credit cards into mobile-centric software and uses a mobile-first approach that allows people to apply and activate their cards in their digital wallets in just a few minutes.

Last year, Visa joined a number of other investors in backing the company, and Deserve said it would use the funding to offer new services to banks and other financial institutions.