Lithic rebuilt card issuing infrastructure
Bo Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Lithic, on the key primitives in card issuing
Rebuilding the stack in house turned Lithic from an app built on top of card infrastructure into a card infrastructure company. Privacy.com hit the real bottlenecks of issuing firsthand, including slow integrations, limited controls, and brittle workflows, then converted those fixes into APIs for other fintechs and software companies. That origin matters because card issuing customers buy reliability and edge case handling as much as they buy card creation.
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In card issuing, the hard part is not just making a card number. It is running the orchestration layer between the issuing bank and the networks for authorizations, clearing, settlement, controls, and exceptions. Lithic rebuilt those primitives after running into limits with older providers, then sold that control to others.
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That put Lithic in a different lane from all in one BaaS platforms like Bond or Unit. Those platforms bundle bank relationships, compliance, and other services for easier launch. Lithic positioned itself as a narrower but more flexible issuer processor for teams that see payments as a core product surface and want more control over customer experience and roadmap.
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The main comparison is Marqeta. Marqeta proved that modern issuer processing could replace older managed service vendors, but its scale and enterprise focus left room below it. Lithic went after the long tail of startups and embedded finance use cases with self serve tools, modern APIs, and infrastructure already tested on Privacy.com volume across millions of cards.
The next step is deeper ownership of the money movement workflow around the card, not just the card itself. As more software companies embed payments, the winners in issuing will be the ones that pair programmable controls with reconciliation, modular integrations, and enough reliability that customers can build core products on top without ever touching the legacy stack underneath.