Delegate complex responsibilities to scale efficiently

The companies most effectively building card programs, from fintechs to enterprise organizations, have one thing in common: they know which tasks to handle in-house and which to delegate to a trusted payment infrastructure partner. While operational processes like dispute management, fraud prevention, and customer support are critical to any card program’s success, they don’t have to consume your team’s attention and resources.

The numbers tell the story best. According to Mastercard, global chargeback volume is set to expand 24% to 324 million annual transactions by 2028. Considering the average chargeback value is $110 in the U.S., that’s substantial time and capital that could be better spent driving growth and innovation. 

It’s why today’s smartest teams aren’t trying to do everything in-house. They’re strategically partnering with experienced program services providers that can handle the operational complexity while they tend to the details that make their product unique. The result? Faster growth, happier customers, and more productive team members that can actually focus on building the future of payments.

Below, we cover what’s at stake and how the right managed solution for card programs can make all the difference.

The hidden costs of doing it alone

Standing up a card program is no small feat, and that’s especially true when you’re building new financial products, retooling an existing program, or managing a complex partner migration. Even seemingly simple launches can stall under the weight of operational hurdles, fragmented ownership across compliance and risk teams, and the sheer coordination required to bring every piece together for production.

After launch, ambitious card programs often face the same challenge: as you scale, your operations become exponentially more complicated. What begins as manageable day-to-day tasks can quickly spiral into demanding workflows that pull your team’s energy away from other, more strategic initiatives.

The ripple effects look something like this:

• Disputes pile up, with each dispute triggering its own thorough investigation, documentation, and follow-through to meet regulatory requirements
• Fraud prevention requires constant vigilance and rapid response times, with costly consequences if important details are missed
• Customer support calls and tickets can spike with the seasons, requiring a knowledgeable team to support the core team with consistent, attentive service
• Regulatory compliance requirements add extra layers of complexity, busywork, and legal implications onto every process

These costs and demands can compound quickly, as you’re paying for both the time spent and the opportunity costs of what your team could be building instead.

It’s a classic scaling trap. The success that drives your growth also creates operational hurdles that can ultimately slow that growth down. The answer is to route those hurdles elsewhere.

A better approach: comprehensive Program Services

What if you could delegate all of the operational needs of your card program to experts who live and breathe payments? That’s the core premise behind Lithic’s Program Services—a modular framework that lets you offload operational work while maintaining full ownership of your program’s strategy and growth.

With Lithic’s flexible, “choose-what-you-need” model, you can access specialized support where it adds the most value and retain control where it matters most. Our modular design means you’re never locked into an all-or-nothing approach. Instead, you’re able to start small, scale selectively, and adjust your level of management as your program evolves.

Currently, Lithic Program Services offer advisory and managed solutions across several key operational areas, with plans to expand these offerings in 2026:

Disputes management

Lithic handles end-to-end dispute resolution from the initial filing to funds recovery. In addition to processing the paperwork, Lithic ensures you minimize your losses, deter bad actors, and optimize your experience for legitimate customers who’ve been impacted by fraud. 

With a 90% chargeback win rate on eligible transactions, you can tailor your dispute operations support to your own resources and goals. Lithic’s dispute decision engine automatically resolves claims when possible, while our team investigates when needed to ensure full transparency via our system of record. Programs typically go live with dispute management in as little as six weeks. While the other two pillars of Lithic’s Program Services are flexibly available to every Lithic client, clients who choose to leverage our Program Management suite must also use disputes management.

Fraud and risk management

Lithic Program Services also include proactive fraud and risk protection through next-generation Authorization Rules, 3DS decisioning, transaction monitoring, and risk scoring at every turn. Lithic provides all of the backtesting and shadow rules as well as detailed reporting, so you can understand exactly how your program is running.

You can block fraudulent activity with complex conditional rules and velocity limits that you can test in shadow mode before going live. Lithic also provides advisory support to continuously refine real-time decisioning, so your fraud defenses improve with every transaction.

Customer support

Finally, Lithic follows through with 24/7/365 comprehensive customer support that, when paired with Lithic’s ledger, is fully integrated into your existing tools and tailored to your brand’s unique preferences, personality, and tone of voice.

Live agents well-versed in fintech answer inquiries via multiple channels—including IVR, phone, email, and chat—while, behind the scenes, Lithic provides them with training, branded scripts, FAQs, and robust dashboards to enable smarter handling, faster resolution times, and a better cardholder experience. 

Customer support can be fully integrated into your internal processes, allowing for a seamless experience for your cardholders, who won't be able to tell the difference between your internal teams and Lithic’s live agents. That means cardholders get help faster, without you needing to build a support operation from scratch.

The Lithic advantage

With Lithic, you get a smart team to handle your most complex operational processes and the right infrastructure to do it exceptionally well.

Unlike banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms that aggregate and wrap multiple providers, our team has directly built and owns our issuer processing technology. That allows for direct access to transaction-level data, real-time financial insights, and the ability to take immediate action with precise information if any issues arise. It also means Lithic’s fraud detection services are built on live transaction details (rather than delayed batch processing) and dispute management processes aren’t hampered by API limitations, so you can see all program activity as it happens, not days or weeks later.

When fraud patterns emerge, Lithic can identify them and respond in real-time. When disputes arise, Lithic has a full transaction history ready to go. When customers call for support, Lithic can see all their account activity with a click. It’s a level of visibility that’s impossible to achieve when working with multiple vendors that can’t share data instantly and accurately.

This technical foundation translates to tangible benefits, too, in the form of faster response times, more accurate risk assessments, and better outcomes for your card program and your customers.

Confidence at scale

Ultimately, the benefit of Program Services comes down to peace of mind. When you know industry-leading experts are safeguarding your program, monitoring for threats, and continuously supporting your customers, you can focus on what you do best: building better payment products that improve your customers’ daily lives.

Your team gets back valuable time and mental bandwidth. Your program gets professional-grade protection and support. Your customers get consistent, high-quality service and experiences. And you can go live in weeks with a managed services setup that’s purpose-built for compliance, transparency, and growth.

Ready to grow without the stress?

Whether you need comprehensive support across all areas of your card program or targeted expertise in specific domains, Lithic has the technology, the talent, and the track record to help you succeed. Because your energy is better spent innovating, not being stuck in the weeds of operations.

Ready to see how Program Services can accelerate your growth? Schedule a call with Lithic’s team to see what a modern solution could look like for your program. Or, register for a free account to start exploring our Sandbox.

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Disclaimer: Lithic is not a bank. Lithic Program Services are provided in partnership with your program’s sponsor bank and integrate with approved third-party vendors who have completed our rigorous due diligence process.