Visa Card Program Management

Visa’s Account Level Management (ALM) system provides issuers, fintechs, processors and rewards providers a suite of services to efficiently manage spend-based cardholder programs that offer flexible benefits, help drive focused marketing campaigns and optimize digital issuance. ALM accepts card lifecycle information through various batch channels like Open File Delivery (OFD), Visa File Exchange Service (VFES), and file upload. These channels may take 3-10 days for end-to-end processing between the source (client) and destination (ALM) system.

The delay introduced by batch enrollment methods may result in cardholders not receiving the expected benefits of the card program and/or a less than optimal interchange assignment to the issuer.

To help address this gap, VCPE provides a near real time channel for card enrollment service in RPINs, thus helping to reduce the lag in enrollment processing that occurs in the batch channels used in the traditional ALM enrollment process. The enrollment information is propagated downstream in near real time to VIP and VCES systems, helping to ensure real time benefits assignment and optimal interchange.

The VCPE API also supports linking and replacement card information. Currently linking and card replacement submitted through the API will be processed according to the traditional batch cycle timelines and not in near real time like the RPIN enrollment. Realtime linking enrollment may be implemented in the future; see section on Future Capabilities.

Traditionally, RPIN enrollment is done through a batch process​. VCPE can help issuers improve their digital issuance experience through real-time card enrollment​.

The cardholder applies for a card and the issuer/processor will digitally issue the card to the cardholder’s mobile device. Upon issuance, the issuer/processor sends cardholder data to Visa via VCPE API. Near real-time processing of the Pan link to RPIN is initiated. Upon link the cardholder can immediately enjoy lifestyle benefits with their new card and the issuer/processor can benefit from interchange qualification. 

1. A qualified program exists for the card product being sent through the API. Program Qualification is handled through Registered Program Manager (RPM) interface on Visa Online. Please contact [email protected] for details.

2. The Registered Program Identification Number (RPIN) has been created within the qualified program above and the same has been provided to the requestor. RPIN information is available on the Registered Program Manager portal. Please contact [email protected] for details.

3. The BIN/range has been configured for the appropriate product and ALP flag. An ALP CIQ must be submitted for this. Please contact [email protected] for details.

4. Additional steps will be necessary when promoting project for CERT and production:

5. For outgoing notifications:

a. The requestor is to provide root, intermediate and leaf certificates for outgoing calls from Visa.

b. The requestor is to provide the callback notification URL.