Lithic vs Nium Physical and Virtual Cards

Lithic is an issuer processing platform for businesses building card programs, moving money, and managing program operations. It supports debit, prepaid, charge, and revolving credit programs with physical, virtual, and tokenized cards. Authorization rules can restrict spending by merchant category, amount, transaction velocity, time of day, and other criteria. Lithic connects to Visa, Mastercard, and American Express through one processing integration, and provides ACH transfers, virtual and routable accounts, Federal Reserve connectivity, and ledger-based reconciliation. Identity and fraud tools include KYC/KYB workflows, 3DS authentication, shadow mode, backtesting, and client decisioning through Authorization Stream Access. Program services can include sponsor-bank operations, network onboarding, regulatory compliance, card fulfillment, reporting, and 24/7/365 cardholder support across chat, email, phone, and IVR. The platform is available through API and web. Each account includes a free Sandbox API key for development and testing; production access requires an account enabled for that environment. Pricing is by custom quote, based on transaction volume and required features.

Nium Physical and Virtual Cards lets businesses issue physical, virtual and digital cards funded by fiat or stablecoins. Programs can apply spending limits, permissions and merchant controls, with rules for channels, geographies, merchant categories and transaction types. Cards connect to consumer or corporate wallets, where funds are loaded, held and spent in real time. Teams manage activity and statements through APIs or Nium’s web portal. Visa, Mastercard and Discover are supported depending on market and program setup. Listed controls include 3DS, tokenization, lifecycle management, fraud-risk tools and chargeback support for eligible disputes. Nium describes uses in corporate spend and procurement, payouts and disbursements, and travel or hotel payments. Compliance support includes onboarding, KYC workflows, transaction monitoring, fraud-risk management and dispute management. Developers receive APIs, SDKs, guides, a production-like sandbox, OpenAPI specification and Postman collection. Card issuing can connect with Nium wallets, balances, FX and payouts. Pricing and program terms are on request. Issuance is limited to approved countries, with a maximum of 1,000 active or locked cards per customer and potentially lower program limits.