Credit Cards as a Service
Anthony Peculic, Head of Cards at Cross River Bank, on building a fintech one-stop shop
Credit cards as a service means credit issuance was becoming a software product, not just a bank product. Instead of a fintech stitching together a sponsor bank, processor, network, compliance team, and card operations on its own, newer platforms packaged that stack into one integration. That matters because credit is harder than prepaid debit. It adds underwriting, repayment logic, fraud exposure, disputes, and ongoing servicing, so the company that can bundle those pieces becomes much more valuable in the stack.
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The real shift was from point tools to a managed stack. Marqeta helped digitize card issuing, but lacked a native credit offering at the time, which often meant multiple back end systems. BaaS players like Bond and Railsbank tried to hide that complexity and present one surface to fintechs.
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The tradeoff was convenience versus economics. A fintech going through a full BaaS layer could launch faster because the provider handled bank relationships, compliance, and program setup, but it gave up more revenue share. Going direct to a processor preserved more interchange economics, but required much more operational work.
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For a bank like Cross River, this expanded the opportunity from debit sponsorship into a broader fintech operating system. Cross River already positioned itself around cards, payments, lending, and compliance via API, so the rise of credit card infrastructure pulled more of the fintech stack toward a one stop provider model.
From here, the winning platforms are likely to be the ones that make debit, credit, lending, and compliance feel like one product. As more fintechs and software companies want embedded financial products without building bank partnerships themselves, credit card infrastructure becomes a wedge into owning the whole banking stack.