Lithic vs OpenWay Way4

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.

OpenWay Way4 is a real-time payment processing platform for banks, processors, and fintechs offering products across card, account-to-account, and wallet rails. Its issuing functions include digital onboarding, instant issuing, card personalization, account and transaction management, authorization controls, clearing, settlement, disputes, and fraud prevention. Listed products range from credit, debit, prepaid, virtual, corporate, multi-currency, crypto-backed, fleet, and BNPL cards to e-money and tokens. OpenWay says 95% of Way4 is parameter-driven, so product terms and processing rules can be configured through business rules. Listed schemes and networks include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club, UnionPay, JCB, SEPA, and domestic schemes. Wallet and NFC services include Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay, and Fitbit Pay. Deployment options are on-premise, cloud, dedicated SaaS, and hybrid. OpenWay lists PCI standards, PSD2, and ISO 27001 among its compliance standards, and states 24/7/365 operation, 99.99% availability, and performance of 5,500 transactions per second. Pricing is available on request. OpenWay says it began in 1995 and is headquartered in Belgium.