Star, the global technology consulting firm that connects strategy, design and engineering to help companies accelerate their growth and value, has launched a partner-agnostic middleware solution to help brands and retailers fast-track the development of loyalty, subscription, fuel, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) and other card-based services.
CardPro Accelerator is essentially a pre-developed set of software components that can seamlessly integrate into existing technology infrastructures. It includes in-built connections to card issuing and processing partners. Fully customizable, CardPro Accelerator shortens the development time and cost of card services by as much as 50%.
“More retailers are launching their own card services to retain brand loyal customers in a competitive market when the cost of living continues to impact their ability to spend,” said Olivier Bessi, Head of the Fintech division at Star. “Loyalty, subscription, fuel and BNPL cards provide convenient ways for customers and staff to control how they pay for goods and services, manage rewards such as loyalty points and redeem vouchers, which helps to keep customers returning to their favourite stores.”
The rising adoption of store cards by young and millennial generations, alongside customer interest in attaining discounts and cash-back rewards, are major driving factors for the card market. Research and Markets estimated the value of the co-branded store card market at $12.34 billion in 2022, which is expected to reach $25.72 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 9.61% during the forecast period.
CardPro Accelerator will reduce the time to market for new card launches by as much as 50% and significantly reduce the cost of building and maintaining card services through its pre-assembled components for app design, card issuance and management, Know Your Buyer (KYB) processes, capturing real-time notifications and more. Further, brands and retailers no longer have to choose between building an entire card ecosystem from scratch (and embarking on an expensive learning curve) or entering a costly co-branded collaboration provided on a subscription basis from a payment card SaaS provider.
Even with pre-assembled components, Star will guide retailers through the design and development process and work with them to find the optimal fintech partners for credit decisions, transaction management, BIN sponsorship, and more; according to the desired components.
Other features of the CardPro Accelerator solution include:
- Partner-agnostic gateway for card issuing and processing (with pre-built integrations via Monovate and Highnote for optimal cost and time benefits.)
- RESTful API for client-server communication that can be used by mobile or web clients, easily connecting to API gateways to enable user authentication and authorization.
- A developer-friendly API that can be deployed on any cloud provider or your own infrastructure and integrated with web and mobile applications and card issuing and processing providers.
- Customizable, flexible library of UI resources, including UI designs, skeleton applications, and pluggable UI widgets, based on user flows and best practices from 15+ years of project experience.
