# Lithic **Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/lithic **Vertical:** Embedded Finance **Subcategory:** Card Issuing Infrastructure **Tier:** Challenger **Website:** lithic.com **Last Updated:** 2026-04-14 ## Summary Card issuing and payment infrastructure platform for developers. NYC, raised $60M+, provides card APIs for fintech companies and platforms building embedded payment products. ## Company Overview Lithic is a card issuing and payment infrastructure platform built for developers and product teams building embedded payment experiences. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York City, the company has raised over $60 million in funding. Lithic provides APIs for virtual and physical card issuance, transaction authorization, spend controls, and payment data that companies integrate into their software products to add card-based financial capabilities.\n\nLithic's developer-first approach distinguishes it in the card issuing space — the platform is designed for technical teams who want to integrate card functionality directly into their product without the overhead of working through traditional banking infrastructure. Its sandbox environment allows developers to test card programs end-to-end before going live, and its documentation and SDK support accelerate time to production. Lithic handles the regulatory infrastructure including BIN sponsorship, network membership, and issuer licensing on behalf of its customers.\n\nLithic's card programs support a range of use cases including corporate expense cards, marketplace disbursement cards, gaming and rewards cards, and B2B payment cards. The platform's programmable spend controls allow issuers to set merchant category restrictions, transaction limits, and velocity controls that enforce specific spending policies for each card type. Lithic has focused on transparency and pricing clarity as differentiators in a market where interchange economics and interchange sharing structures are often opaque. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What can you build with Lithic? Lithic enables developers to issue virtual and physical payment cards, set programmable spend controls, process transactions, and build card-based financial products — from expense management to marketplace disbursement to rewards programs. ### How developer-friendly is Lithic's API? Lithic is built developer-first with clean REST APIs, comprehensive SDKs, detailed documentation, and a full sandbox environment for testing card programs before launch — targeting product teams who want to move quickly. ### Does Lithic provide BIN sponsorship? Yes. Lithic provides the underlying banking infrastructure including BIN sponsorship, network membership, and issuer licensing, so customers don't need their own banking relationships to launch a card program. ### What is Lithic and what does it enable fintechs to build? Lithic is a card issuing infrastructure company that provides APIs for creating and managing physical and virtual payment cards. Fintechs, software companies, and enterprises use Lithic to rapidly build card programs for consumer wallets, B2B payments, expense management, and other use cases without navigating the complex relationships with card networks and bank sponsors themselves. ### What is Lithic's Privacy.com product? Privacy.com is a consumer-facing product built by Lithic that allows individuals to create virtual debit cards linked to their bank account for safe online purchases. Users can create single-use, merchant-locked, or spending-limited virtual cards, protecting their real card details from data breaches and enabling granular control over online subscription spending. Privacy.com helped establish Lithic's card issuance expertise. ### How does Lithic's API make card issuance faster? Lithic provides a complete card issuance API that handles card creation, transaction authorization, settlement, dispute management, and reporting. Developers can issue a new virtual card through the API in milliseconds, making real-time card creation for use cases like instant virtual card delivery for B2B payments practical to implement without building custom banking infrastructure. ### What fraud controls does Lithic provide for card programs? Lithic offers configurable transaction controls including merchant category code (MCC) blocking, spending limits, velocity controls, geographic restrictions, and real-time transaction approval logic. These controls allow card program operators to define precisely what spending is permitted on cards they issue, enabling use-case-specific cards with appropriate restrictions built in. ### How does Lithic's pricing work for card issuers? Lithic uses an interchange-share or fee-based pricing model depending on the card program type and volume. For consumer card programs, Lithic typically shares a portion of the interchange revenue generated from card transactions with its clients. For B2B and commercial programs, fee-based pricing per card or per transaction may apply. Custom pricing is negotiated for high-volume programs. ## Tags fintech, saas, b2b, api-first, developer-tools, platform, payment-processing, startup --- *Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*