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How Mercury Scaled Cards with Lithic

Reggie Young
Senior Product Counsel
April 23, 2024
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 min read

In 2019, Mercury’s three co-founders came together with a vision of better banking for startups. At the time, big banks’ corporate products just didn’t meet the unique needs of these companies. So Mercury set out to fill that gap. 

Mercury’s founders envisioned world-class, innovative financial products that give founders and finance teams more control, time, and peace of mind. And they knew that required a world-class commitment to product design and experience. 

They’ve grown to support over 100,000 businesses, and handled more than $95 billion of transactions in  2023.

Today, Mercury uses Lithic to power all of their debit and credit cards. Their decision to partner with Lithic was driven by Lithic’s:

  1. World-class product set,
  2. Ability to handle large volume and scale reliably,
  3. Flexible support of multiple bank partners, and 
  4. Flawless reconciliation.

Choosing Lithic for Reliable Card Growth

With Lithic, Mercury meets their core program needs and strategic goals. 

First, Lithic’s API is robust and reliable; it can handle the hundreds of millions of dollars of monthly card volume Mercury has, and can support their continued growth. 

Second, Lithic’s tech and product capabilities also meet Mercury’s high product standards. By working with Lithic, Mercury was able to achieve the customer experience they wanted for their IO Credit Card. For example, Mercury leverages Lithic’s Auth Stream Access, which enables card programs to make customized transaction approval decisions. 

Moreover, because Lithic's offerings are flexible and modular, Mercury can easily plug in different, best-in-class technology vendors for different workflows like KYC, transaction monitoring, and other needs.

Lastly, Lithic offers flawless reconciliation, which lets Mercury get the data they need to reconcile payments down to the penny, and report transactions to their bank partners with peace of mind.

On top of meeting Mercury’s core needs, Lithic also offers white-glove support and a customer-centric mindset, delivered by its in-house team of experts with deep card experience.

Using Lithic: Best-in-Class Products

Built for Scale Dependably processing hundreds of millions of dollars of monthly card volume.

Adding new card products and new bank partners with ease.
Instant Issuance and Digital Wallets Instantly creating virtual cards.

Adding virtual cards to digital wallets for immediate in-person spending.

Authenticating cards added to digital wallets via customized 2FA emails and in-app messaging.
Vital Fraud Controls Creating rules for real-time transaction authorizations (or declines) – and tapping into real-time transaction data insights.

Setting card and customer spending limits.

Leveraging 3-D Secure to control fraud liability.
White-Glove Service from Payment Experts Leveraging Lithic’s in-house team of payment experts that offer white-glove, consultative services.

Benefitting from Lithic’s decade of card program experience.
Best-in-Class Reconciliation Getting rich data to reconcile and report transactions to banks – down to the penny.

With Lithic, Mercury found a card issuing partner it can depend on as it grows and scales, so the company can focus on the bigger picture: Offering world-class products that make banking better for startups and ecommerce businesses.

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