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 businesses fast-track the development of expense management, neo-bank, digital wallets, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), smart lending 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 companies are launching their own card services,” said Olivier Bessi, Head of the Fintech division at Star. “They help employers manage employee expenses and fleet costs. More smaller retailers are launching loyalty, debit and BNPL cards to keep customers returning to their stores during a period of intense competition for customer share of wallet during the cost of living crisis. Cards provide convenient ways for customers to control how they pay for goods and services and manage rewards such as loyalty points or voucher redemption.”

CardPro Accelerator will reduce the time to market for new cards and card-based solution 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. 

Companies that wish to launch and manage their own card service no longer have to choose between building an entire card solution from scratch (and embarking on an expensive learning curve) or settling for white-label offerings that often come with limited customization options and generic brand experiences. 

Even with pre-assembled components included in CardPro Accelerator’s middleware layer, Star will guide customers 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.