Cards Embedded Inside Software Workflows
Karim Atiyeh, co-founder and CTO of Ramp, on the future of the card issuing market
The real moat in card issuing is not issuing a card at all, it is owning a narrow workflow so well that the card feels native to the job. Modern issuers lowered the cost of launching a program, but that also made generic card programs easy to copy. The winners are the ones that pair a specific spend behavior with tight controls, embedded data, and fast reconciliation, like a wellness card, a fleet card, or a travel card that already lives inside the software where the purchase happens.
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Ramp itself is an example of this logic. It did not win by offering another rewards card. It won by wrapping cards in one click spend controls, receipt matching, and accounting mapping, so finance teams could issue cards for a precise purpose and close the books faster.
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The broader market has moved the same way. After the first wave of generic neobanks and card programs, the surviving companies increasingly specialized by segment or bundled cards with software. In practice, the card became a monetized feature inside a larger product, not the whole product.
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That same pattern now shows up upmarket. Brex Embedded places cards directly inside travel and procurement software like Navan and Coupa, where the value is not the card itself but automatic reconciliation inside an existing workflow. The issuer that fits the use case best gets the distribution.
From here, card issuing keeps moving away from horizontal platforms and toward purpose built payment experiences for specific jobs, industries, and channels. The biggest winners will look less like standalone card companies and more like software products that happen to have a card inside, with the card capturing spend only after the workflow has already captured the customer.