Getting Started

Create and manage your card-linked rewards program with the provided guides and API documentation.

Quickstart

To simplify the onboarding process, use this quickstart guide as a high-level overview of what to expect in the Kard integration. 

For details on functionality or technical specs, refer to the Product Guides and API documentation respectively.

Call the Kard API

To access the Kard API

1. Request sandbox access.
2. Kard will provide you a clientID and clientSecret.
3. For each session, call the Kard Authentication endpoint. 
4. Once granted a session token, you can call the API as needed.

Standard Implementation

The Kard integration consists of three main areas of functionality, Cardholders, Merchant Offers, and, Transaction CLO Matching. Below, we will cover the basics of these three sections and the implementation steps.

Cardholders

The Cardholders domain tracks all end users that are opted into your rewards program. Kard does not require any PII, but does need a User ID, User Name, Card BIN and Last 4 to accurately match and attribute valid reward opportunities to your cardholders.

Relevant Kard API Endpoint(s) 

1. Create User
2. Delete User
3. Update User
4. Create User Card

Merchant Offers

Kard provides the endpoints required to view and filter on valid merchant offers for your cardholders. We work with a number of merchants to provide a large ecosystem and variety of offers to provide cardholders with the optimal reward experience via National and Local Card Linked Offers, as well as Affiliate deals.

Relevant Kard API Endpoint(s) 

1. Get Rewards Merchant (Card Linked Offers)
2. Get Rewards Offers (Card Linked Offers)
3. Get Affiliate Offers (Affiliate Offers)

Transaction CLO Matching

Kard’s Transaction CLO Matching functionality allows the platform to ingest all issuer transactions and automatically identify redeemable card-linked offers (CLOs) for reward program cardholders in near real-time. The multi-tiered matching algorithm is built to constantly increase its dataset of known transactional data. The ideal end user experience that Kard provides is a cardholder being notified of a reward within a minute of completing a purchase.

Our recommendation is to provide all consumer transactions via the Kard API. Batch is possible, if needed, and please contact a Kard account manager to discuss further.

Relevant Kard API Endpoint(s) 

1. Incoming Transaction
2. Earned Reward Webhook

Transaction Lifecycle 

The three primary patterns used to send transactions to Kard for matching processing are:

1. Dual Message
2. Single Message
3. One Authorization to Many Settlements

 The following are descriptions and code recipes for each pattern.

I. Dual Message

The most common pattern used to transmit transactions is the Dual Message system, also known as a Signature Debit transaction. Using this system, a transaction is submitted in 2 events. The first, originating event is a temporary transaction state followed by a second event that is a final, clearing transaction state.

1. Temporary Transaction Event: APPROVED
2. Final Transaction Event: SETTLED, REVERSED, DECLINED, RETURNED (special case where the originating, temporary transaction ID is not readily associated)

Code recipe for temporary transaction event. Note that for temporary transaction events, “status: APPROVED” and there is an authorizationDate timestamp.

{
 "transactionId": "sandbox-web-303",
 "referringPartnerUserId": "438103",
 "cardBIN": "123456",
 "cardLastFour": "4321",
 "amount": 10000,
 "currency": "USD",
 "description": "Hilltop BBQ",
 "status": "APPROVED",
 "authorizationDate": "2022-10-29T17:48:06.135Z"
}

Design your Rewards Program UX

Below are the minimum requirements (information and display) for a standard program.

Kard’s API-first technology means that you can design your user experience in the way that best suits the needs of your rewards program. The Kard network serves both national and local card linked offers to our issuer partners, and local offers have their own additional requirements. Be sure to refer to the section on requirements for local offers if you plan to have them enabled on your platform.

Note: For the majority of Kard partners, opting into rewards is part of the general enrollment process. If that is not the case, an additional screen is required to opt-in cardholders to the rewards program.

Available Offers

Your “Rewards” screen is a chance to invite your cardholders to see the benefits associated with your card and program. This will show all CLOs available to the cardholders and is typically filtered on a number of criteria, such as online versus in-store offers. 

In combination with emails marketing specific brands to your cardholders, this screen increases the likelihood that a cardholder will seek out the brands that reward for their loyalty.

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Offer Details

Kard works with brands to display accurate terms and offer qualifications. A screen to show the offer details allows a cardholder to know exactly what to expect from an offer and mitigates confusion in the user experience. The full set of required offer details is:

• Merchant name
• Merchant logo
• Cashback amount or percent
• Terms and conditions
• Channel type (online or in-store)

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Redemption Notification

Sending a notification to your cardholders upon a successful offer redemption is crucial to the consumer linking the benefit to having used your card. Providing a notification to the end user within 24 hours after the purchase is required, but we recommend serving it in near real-time, to provide the cardholder instant feedback.

Impression Reports

Building your offer impression reporting infrastructure is one of the most powerful ways to measure and enhance the success of your rewards program. Kard’s existing API does not include an impression reporting module. The most common solution for impression reporting is to programmatically insert a tracking pixel into the logo images of each offer you run. Impression reporting is only a Kard requirement for local offers, but best practice is to integrate this type of reporting into all of your offer infrastructure.

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Pre-Launch Checklist 

Before launching your rewards program, Kard will work with you to review the application that you have created within a test environment. Ideally, the full web / mobile application is built, so we can review the full rewards experience that will be delivered to your consumers. The purpose of this check is to confirm that the integration utilizes the full functionality of Kard and will deliver the most value to you and your cardholders.

Specifically we will review the below use cases. Please work with your Kard account management team to complete the checklist.

Use Cases Reviewed

1. Confirm the creation of a new cardholder in the sandbox environment with appropriate information.

2. Confirm a transaction with data in the correct format. Required fields for review include:

• Transaction Id
• Referring Partner User Id
• Amount (in cents)
• Status
• Currency
• Description
• Transaction Dates (including Authorization and Settled)
• Card BIN
• Card Last Four
• Merchant Id
• MCC
• Merchant Name
• Merchant Street
• Merchant City
• Merchant State
• Merchant Zip

3. Confirm notification both valid approved and settled transaction for reward and demonstrate the end user experience of receiving a notification.

4. Confirm the end user experience of viewing merchant locations and valid cashback offers within the web / mobile application.

5. Confirm the daily reconciliation file of redeemed transactions is populated via S3.

Product Guides

Cardholders

Summary

The Cardholders functionality tracks all end users that are opted into your rewards program. Kard does not require any PII, but does need a User ID, User Name, Card BIN and Last 4 to accurately match and attribute valid reward opportunities to your cardholders.

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Included Features

Cardholder Actions

The Kard API Users Endpoints enables the following features for cardholders within the platform.

1. Add a Cardholder to a Rewards Program - The product provides an endpoint to add new cardholders to the rewards program with relevant information on each end user. When adding a cardholder, multiple cards can also be added to the platform for that end user.
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2. Remove a Cardholder from the Rewards Program - Kard provides an endpoint to remove a cardholder and all identifying data from the platform.
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3. Update Cardholder information - A cardholder can update their information within the Kard product.

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Cardholder Program Enrollment

An issuer can choose to enroll cardholders in their CLO, Affiliate, or both rewards programs. Cardholders can also be unenrolled in all programs, but kept in the Kard system to provide an opportunity for re-enrollment.

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Card Actions

A cardholder can perform the below actions on the cards associated with their rewards program. Each rewards member can have multiple cards associated with their account.

1. Add Card - Once a cardholder is in a rewards program, they can add other valid cards to gain rewards from use of that card. For example, if a bank provides a virtual and physical card, both can be added to each end user so that rewards are tracked when the cardholder makes a purchase on either physical or virtual card. 
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2. Disable Card - An issuer can disable cards active in the rewards program for their cardholders. Once a card is disabled, it will no longer redeem offers and cannot be re-enabled. This is not a required step.

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Card Auto-Enrollment

For specific cases, the Kard platform can automatically add a new card to a cardholder, if the relevant data is provided within a transaction. For more details, please contact a Kard Account Manager.

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Card Overlap Prevention

Kard spans a number of modern direct issuers, including neobanks and card aggregators. To enable our partners that aggregate cards across various card issuers, the platform includes a feature to track and prevent Kard partners from enrolling the same card in multiple programs. 

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Implementation Details

Cardholder Program Enrollment

Below are notes on what is required to correctly add a cardholder to the Kard platform.

1. Enrollment for Go-Live: To minimize integration efforts, Kard can enroll existing cardholders into the rewards program in a batch method. Please talk to a Kard Account Manager for further details.
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2. Linking Additional Cards: Unless otherwise specified, all new cards must be added via the Create Card Endpoint.

Cardholder Program Unenrollment

Below are notes on what is required to correctly unenroll a cardholder from the Kard platform.

1. Reward Unenrollment: Via the Update User Endpoint, an issuer can update the enrollment of a cardholder with the enrolledRewards field. This keeps the end user’s data available for accurate reporting and re-enrollment.
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2. Cardholder Removal:  Via the Delete User Endpoint, an issuer can remove all cardholder data from the platform. If that cardholder re-enrolls, historic data is preserved, and the Kard API supports a seamless re-enrollment.
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3. Card Removal: Individual cards do not need to be actively removed from a cardholder when not in use. 

Merchant Offers

Summary

Kard provides the endpoints required to view and filter merchant offers for your cardholders. We work with merchants to provide a large ecosystem of varied offers to provide cardholders with the optimal reward experience via National and Local Card Linked Offers, as well as Affiliate deals.

Included Features

Defined Offer Sources

Kard provides two types of sources through our merchant and partner networks. 

1. Card Linked Offers (CLO) - Both National and Local merchant offers are provided through the Kard platform. A CLO does not require any activation or interaction from the cardholder, with Kard’s Transaction Matching Algorithm identifying rewards as soon as the card is used at a relevant merchant. For a full list of live offers, please work with your Kard Account Manager. 
   a. CLOs are available for both online and in store purchases.
   b. CLOS vary on reward activations, amounts, dates, and terms and conditions.

1. Affiliate Offers - This offer type allows cardholders to view merchants within the rewards program and provides a trackable link to the merchant’s website. Regardless of card used, if a cardholder makes a purchase using the provided link, cashback is awarded to the issuer and their cardholder.
   a. Affiliate Offers are only available for online purchases.

Defined Reward Commission Types

Kard provides two reward commission types.

1. Percent - For example, 5% back on a purchase of $200, for $10 back.
2. Flat - For example, $5 back on a purchase, regardless of amount.

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Filter on Offers

Out of the box filtering of rewards is provided to enable cardholders to quickly find and use the most relevant CLOs to them. Kard’s API is built to minimize implementation effort required on our partner’s side. Currently, the platform enables filtering on the below parameters.

1. Location - View offers by the corresponding longitude / latitude, city, state, or zip code of a store location.

       2. Offer Type - View offers available to online or instore shopping.

Targeted Offers

The CLO product allows merchants to segment consumers based on purchase history. This enables flexibility for our merchants to hit a number of use cases, maximizing return on ad spend and encouraging brands to continue use of the Kard platform. 

A typical use case of targeting would be to divide a consumer base into “New”, “Lapsed”, and “Baseline” consumers. The targeting engine is able to define any audience, based on purchase history, so depending on the brand the “New” consumer could be anyone who hasn’t made a purchase at the brand in 12 months or it could be defined as no purchase in the last two years.

Offer Qualifications

Offer qualifications are built into the platform, allowing merchants to configure CLOs that fit their marketing needs. The below features encourage more brands to join Kard’s reward ecosystem because of the flexibility it provides.

1. Minimum and Maximum Transaction Amount - Reward cardholders with a CLO only if the transaction is below or above a defined amount. For example, a cardholder must purchase over $50 worth of items to receive 10% cashback.
2. Minimum and Maximum Reward Amount - Set a minimum or maximum value a cardholder can be awarded per transaction. For example, award a cardholder 10% cashback, up to $75.
3. Store Locations - For in-store rewards, identify specific store locations that are valid for a CLO.
4. One-time CLO Redemptions - Only reward a customer for a CLO once. This is specifically relevant for subscription offers.
5. Limited Time Offers - Offers with set start and expiration dates.

View Detailed Information of a Merchant’s Store

Kard keeps updated store location details for merchants providing active offers. As an issuer, you can pull relevant information on a store location and share it with your cardholders, enabling real-time geo-targeting within your application. Details include:

1. Address
2. Longitude and Latitude
3. Phone Number
4. Store Hours

Issuer Portal

The Kard Portal experience for Issuers will provide Issuer partners more visibility into Kard’s reward ecosystem and their transaction data. It will also enable partners to submit & track support requests on a centralized UI. You can see examples of the portal below.

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Implementation Details

For an overview of how the Merchant Offers functionality integrates with the rest of the platform, view the Getting Started guide. The below information is focused on the specifics of implementing Merchant Offers functionality. Kard is an API product, providing high configurability to fit your rewards program, and implementation patterns will vary.

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Display Card Linked Offers to your Cardholders

Below are notes on what is required to correctly display card linked offers to your program’s cardholders.

1. Offer Display - CLO merchants and their offers are retrieved via the Merchant endpoints. The offer object is aligned to each merchant, where a merchant can contain multiple offers.
2. Offer Update Frequency - Merchant offers do change within the Kard platform. Frequency depends on a number of factors, including if the offer is at the national or local level. It is recommended that the offers are pulled at a minimum of once a day for your program to reflect the most up to date information.
3. Information Required on Display- For each merchant, a number of fields are displayed at the merchant level and additional fields at the offer level. At a minimum, your cardholder must see the below information within the rewards program application: 
   a. Name of the Merchant - “name”
   b. Image URL (where applicable) - “imgUrl”
   c. Offer Terms (where applicable) - “terms”‍
4. Inactive or Expired Offers - With fair warning, merchants may remove offers from the Kard reward ecosystem. In that case, a merchant offer will be moved to inactive status. Inactive merchants and offers are not displayed from the Merchant endpoints. In this scenario, transactions that were authorized before the offer was moved to inactive status will be counted as a reward. 
   a. Offers can also expire, if set as a scheduled campaign by the merchant. The “expirationDate” within the Merchant endpoints alerts our clients to this fact. Similar to inactive offers, if an offer expires, authorized transactions are counted before that date.‍
5. Offer Go-Live Timetable - Once a new offer is available to Kard, it typically takes 24-48 hours for an online offer to go live and 3-4 days for an in-store offer.‍
6. Store Location Display - Store Location Details are displayed via the Location endpoints. Store details can be displayed for all stores of a merchant or on an individual store basis.

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Display Affiliate Offers to your Cardholders

Below are notes on what is required to correctly display affiliate offers to your program’s cardholders.

1. Add-on Feature - Affiliate offers is an add-on feature of the platform. Work with your Kard Account Manager to determine a timeline to utilize this functionality.
2. Offer Display - Affiliate offers and merchants are displayed via the Get Affiliate Offers endpoint. The offer object is aligned to each merchant, where a merchant can contain multiple offers.
3. Information Required on Display - For each affiliate merchant, a number of fields are displayed at the merchant level and additional fields at the offer level. At a minimum, your cardholder must see the below information within the rewards program application: 
   a. Name of the Merchant - “name”
   b. Banner Image URL - “bannerImgURL”
   c. Offer Terms - “exclusions”
   d. Link to make Purchase - “clickURL”

Note: Affiliate offer attribution relies upon the cardholder navigating through the specific link of a merchant. Using an incognito browser can affect attribution accuracy.

Transaction CLO Matching

Summary

Kard’s Transaction CLO Matching functionality allows the platform to ingest all issuer transactions in near real-time, to automatically identify redeemable CLOs for reward program cardholders. The multi-tiered matching algorithm is built to continually increase its dataset of known transactional data, allowing for a seamless end user experience when they use their card at the point of sale and receive a notification of rewards back to their account.

Our recommendation is to provide all consumer transactions via the Kard API. Batch is possible, if needed, and please contact a Kard account manager to discuss further.

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Included Features

Ingest Transactions via API or Batch

The Kard platform is capable of ingesting transactions in a variety of avenues, finding the best route for your rewards program.

1. Real-time API (Recommended) - The Kard API allows issuers to send transactions in real-time to the platform. Multiple transactions can be sent per request. Kard recommends this route so that your cardholders can have the experience of receiving a notification of a successful redemption in near real-time.
2. Batch - Transactions can be sent in batch to the Kard platform at a regular cadence. 

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Near Real-time Matching

Kard’s matching multi-tiered matching algorithm automatically identifies valid offers a cardholder has redeemed in using their registered card. The vast majority of valid transactions are identified and a notification is sent to the cardholder within 60 seconds of Kard ingestion.

Additional Review - To manage inconsistent data, the matching algorithm is able to flag transactions for review. Once reviewed in a standard fashion by Kard, transactions with similar data points will automatically be accepted or rejected going forward. This allows the algorithm to constantly increase its data set of known transactional data points.

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Matching Notifications

Notification of a redeemed CLO or Affiliate offer allows cardholders to feel the benefit of a rewards program. Kard provides two avenues to ensure issuers can provide their end users a connection to the brand and its reward.

1. Near Real-time Notification - Notify cardholders of a redeemed offer as soon as it is processed through the platform. Notifications can be provided on authorized, settled, or both transaction events. This webhook will be retried four times if not received properly on the first attempt.
2. Daily Reconciliation - Kard also provides a daily JSON file of all redeemed transactions to the issuer, allowing for confirmation of all notifications to the program’s cardholders.

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Fraud Detection

Hold Transactions

Fraud happens and Kard wants to ensure that we don’t notify customers of rewards that may not be accurate. To prevent this case, the platform has transaction amount limits for all merchants within the rewards ecosystem. If a limit is exceeded, Kard does not notify the issuer of a redeemed offer until the transaction is settled.
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Transaction Monitoring 

Kard conducts internal fraud detection to identify suspicious behavior through abnormal transaction amounts and high volume transactions or returns per cardholder on a daily basis. We then notify Issuers of any potential fraud to be investigated if it is found.

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Transaction Audit Support

Kard is continuing to iterate on its matching algorithm and additional features. We realize that integrations can change and produce errors. The Transaction Support Audit feature allows issuers to submit transactions that are believed to be incorrect within the Kard platform. For example, if a cardholder believes they should have received a reward and did not. Submission is available via two routes.

1. Kard API (Recommended) - Submit to the Kard platform directly, we recommend integrating this endpoint to your helpdesk or customer support flow.
2. Web Form - Submit a transaction for audit via the Kard Issuer Portal.

Implementation Details

Send Transactions to the Kard Platform for CLO Redemption

Below are notes on what is required to correctly send transactional data to the Kard platform for CLO Redemption.

1. Real-time Transaction Ingestion - The Incoming Transaction endpoint provides an avenue for you to send cardholder transactions via the Kard API. Additional notes:
   a. This call is asynchronous and provides a response that the transactions have been successfully ingested to the platform and are awaiting processing. 
   b. This call can ingest arrays, so depending on your implementation, multiple transactions can be sent per call, reducing the calls required.‍
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2. Batch Transaction Ingestion - If integration to an API is not feasible, Kard offers batch processing for transaction ingestion. This route is provided via direct access to a specific AWS S3 location. Access is granted via IAM security policies. Additional notes:
   a. Work with a Kard Account Manager to view the .csv format of ingesting transactions via batch.
   b. At a minimum, transactions must be sent in once a day and the platform can ingest transactions via batch once an hour.‍
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3. Transaction Status Details - Kard requires two transaction statuses for CLO redemption, “authorized” and “settled”. 
   a. All transaction statuses are tracked as separate events within Kard, with a linking transaction ID. A transaction event is considered unique by the combination of Transaction ID, Status, and Transaction Date.
   b. The transaction timestamp associated with each transaction is the timestamp of the status identified per event.
   c. It is acceptable to send only a “settled” transaction that also includes the “authorized” date.
   d. Kard also accepts other statuses and recommends sending each transaction event. You can see the full list of events in the API documentation.‍
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4. Duplicate Transactions - A transaction is considered a duplicate if the transaction ID, status, and timestamp are all identical. If that is the case, the transaction will not be ingested into the Kard platform.
5. Reversal Transactions - For reversed transactions that occur before settlement, rewards are not paid to the issuer and cardholder. For returned transactions that occur after settlement, Kard will honor the reward. 
   Note: Kard actively monitors incoming transactions to identify bad actors attempting to “game the system”. Cardholders who make an inordinate amount of returns on rewarded transactions will be flagged and possibly removed from the rewards program.

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Redeem a CLO and Notify Cardholders

Below are notes on what is required for a reward program cardholder to redeem a CLO and be notified of a redemption. 

1. Information Required to Redeem a CLO - The below information is required within a transaction for Kard to identify redeemed CLOs. 
   a. Registered Cardholder - User ID, BIN, Last 4 of a cardholder registered within the Kard platform.
   b. MID - required for Local CLOs.‍
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2. Webhook Setup - To set up the notification of a redeemed reward to your cardholders, provide a URL to a Kard Account Manager where you want the Earned Reward Webhook sent. 
   a. For the webhook signature, there is a webhook key that you will be provided, once the URL is configured in the Kard platform. The key is used to generate an HMAC of the webhook body.  We calculate the HMAC and send it in the header. On your side, you generate the HMAC with the body and the key, and compare it to the HMAC in the header, to validate the message.
   b. HMAC generation is based on Sha256 hmac with base64 encoding.

1. Notification Requirements - Notification requirements include:
   a. The rewards program cardholder must be notified of a redeemed reward within 24 hours of the transaction.
   b. The cardholder must be notified of the merchant that provided the reward.
   c. (Local CLOs only) The cardholder must have the option to complete a survey of their experience with the merchant. This is the “postDineInLinkURL” within the Earned Reward Webhook.

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Daily Redeemed Offer Reconciliation

Daily reconciliation is provided in JSON format. You can see an example at the end of this section. This route is offered via direct access to a specific AWS S3 location. Access is granted via IAM security policies. Work with a Kard Account Manager to set up this feature during integration.

Kard recommends cross checking this file with all earned reward webhooks received from the platform in the last day to confirm your cardholders are receiving near real-time feedback for their use of the rewards program. This file is generated daily at 9am EST.

Example daily reconciliation file in JSON format: 
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{"data":[{"user":{"referringPartnerUserId":"123456789"},"card":{"bin":"123456","last4":"7890","network":"MASTERCARD"},"reward":{"merchantId":"60ef539be9039cf925728afd","name":"Popeyes","commissionToIssuer":55,"status":"APPROVED","type":"CARDLINKED"},"transaction":{"issuerTransactionId":"6789506067945","status":"APPROVED","transactionAmountInCents":2496,"transactionTimeStamp":"2021-09-05T23:45:57.000Z"},{"user":{"referringPartnerUserId":"123456123"},"card":{"bin":"123456","last4":"8123","network":"MASTERCARD"},"reward":{"merchantId":"60e4a4ee1c7ea11a4fd9ec86","name":"Advance Auto Parts","commissionToIssuer":164,"status":"APPROVED","type":"CARDLINKED"},"transaction":{"issuerTransactionId":"6789506067956","status":"SETTLED","transactionAmountInCents":4479,"transactionTimeStamp":"2021-09-05T15:00:00.000Z"}, {"user":{"referringPartnerUserId":"123456456"},"card":{"bin":"123456","last4":"1234","network":"MASTERCARD"},"reward":{{"merchantId":"60e4a4191c7ea11a4fd9e4fc","name":"Qdoba","commissionToIssuer":38,"status":"APPROVED","type":"CARDLINKED"},"transaction":{"issuerTransactionId":"6789506077945","status":"SETTLED","transactionAmountInCents":1017,"transactionTimeStamp":"2021-09-05T12:00:00.000Z"}}]}

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Reward Funding

Kard does not provide real-time reward funds. We work with the merchants within our rewards ecosystem to reconcile redeemed CLOs and provide funds to our reward program partners on a monthly basis. For questions regarding funds, please contact a Kard Account Manager.

Marqeta + Kard Integration

Purpose

This document outlines the steps required for an Issuer to complete an integration with the Marqeta + Kard partnership. 

Marqeta APIs and webhook events are referenced in this document. This information can be found in the Marqeta Docs section.

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Partnership Overview

Kard has completed an integration to Marqeta’s APIs for the purpose of significantly reducing the integration effort required by an Issuer to add Kard’s services to their offering. Via the integration, Kard and Marqeta take ownership of tracking and communicating cardholder, card, and transaction data, so this data is not required to be passed from the Issuer to Kard.
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Integration

This integration works with the existing Kard implementation to reduce the workload on the Issuer. This does not cover all integration pieces required to run a rewards program powered by Kard. Specifically, this integration does not cover the merchant offers that will be displayed in your rewards program. Please review the Kard documentation for a full sense of an integration and what is required.

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Prerequisites

To utilize this integration, you must:

1. Utilize Marqeta as your card processing solution or plan to.
2. Design the UX of the Rewards program, including integration with the merchant offers from Kard’s API and displaying in your application.

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Integration Steps

1. Issuer provides permission to Kard to utilize the Issuer’s Marqeta sandbox environment credentials.
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2. Kard configures the Issuer’s Marqeta sandbox environment to receive events from Marqeta’s webhook.
   
   a. Note Marqeta currently allows a maximum of 5 active webhooks per Issuer environment. The Issuer must ensure there is at least 1 webhook available for Kard to utilize.‍
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3. Kard works with the Issuer to validate that all transaction data received from Marqeta is identical to what the Issuer receives.‍
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4. Kard works with the Issuer to validate that all card and cardholder data received from Marqeta is identical to what the Issuer sends Marqeta.‍
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5. Issuer integrates with Kard’s Earned Reward Webhook and daily reconciliation file to accurately notify cardholders when they redeem a reward.‍
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6. Issuer integrates with the Rewards endpoints to display the merchant offers available to their cardholders.‍
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7. Issuer works with Kard to validate that the full solution works in the sandbox environment.‍
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8. Issuer provides permission to Kard to utilize the Issuer’s Marqeta production environment credentials.‍
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9. Kard stands up the same integration for Production as above and validates with the Issuer, finalizing the implementation.
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Data Mapping

The below tables outline the data that Kard uses from Marqeta to enable the Issuer’s rewards program. Not all fields returned in Kard’s API will be sourced from Marqeta and they are not shown in the tables.

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User Events

Kard receives all Marqeta Account Holder transition event types.

Card Events

Kard currently receives the following card transition event types from Marqeta: 

1. state.activated
2. state.reinstated
3. state.suspended
4. state.terminated

Transaction Events

Kard currently receives the following transaction event types from Marqeta: 

1. authorization
2. authorization.clearing
3. pindebit

Note: The data mapping for the transaction events below also apply to Kard’s Earned Rewards Webhook.

August 2023

1. Historical Transaction Data Ingestion - Kard has expanded its capabilities to ingest multiple years of historical transaction data once an Issuer onboards with Kard. This will ensure all cardholders on our platform are receiving the most up to date offers and rewards based on their extended spending history by merging additional historical data with existing & live data.

2. Revamped filtering on Start and Expiration Offer Dates on Portal - The start and expiration offers dates on the Offers page on the issuer portal take a range of values for each field. The filtering was revamped to correctly display results when a singular range value (either start or end) is given. See example below to better understand this functionality.

For example, filtering to 9/12/2023 at the start range for the “Start Date” field will display all offers that went live on or after September 12, 2023. 

3. Enhanced filtering on Total Commission field on Offers Page on Portal - The total commission field filtering was optimized so that portal users can filter by this field to the tenth decimal place, instead of just integer level precision for more accurate total commission analysis. 

For example, applying this filter on the total commission will display all results where the total commission is between 7.5 and 9.5. 

4. Portal Automatic Log Out Improvements - The automatic portal log out window was extended to three hours, so that users can productively use the portal for longer periods without having to log in on an hourly cadence. The portal now also takes into account idle time (no mouse / click activity detected), and will prompt users to take an action if they’ve been idle for 10 minutes (see figure below for prompt). If a user doesn’t take action for 5 more minutes, they’ll be logged out to ensure a secure portal experience.

After a user has been idle on the portal for 10 minutes, they can expect a similar message as above prompting them to take action within 5 minutes to avoid log out.

5. Admin Portal Improvements: New functionalities were added to the Kard Admin portal to enable faster, and more efficient offer launches.

July 2023

New Features for the Issuer Portal Experience

1. Exporting merchants, offers, and locations campaign data 

Exporting campaign data was previously only available via access to Kard’s API. The Kard Issuer Portal now provides our issuer clients a way to export all of their active rewards program data via CSV in a self-service workflow, so that marketing teams at our partner organizations can design better marketing materials to encourage banking activity by their cardholders.

• Merchants page export: Portal users can retrieve the relevant merchant data fields shown on the portal (Merchant ID, Merchant Name, Source of Merchant, Website URL, and Merchant Category) for all merchants with active offers in their rewards program by clicking the “Export” button. 
• Offers portal page export: In addition to merchant data, portal users can export the relevant offer data fields (Offer ID, Offer Name, Offer Type, Campaign Start Date, Campaign End Date, Commission Type, Total Commission, and isTargeted) for all active offers in their rewards program.
• Locations portal page export: The Kard Issuer portal also supports the exporting of in-store location data (Location ID, Location Name, Street Address, City, State, and Zip Code) for all merchants running active campaigns with the issuer in question. 

Here's how to export these reports in the Issuer Portal:

2. Viewing “Under Review” transactions on Reports page 

Some transactions require a manual review as a part of the matching process to determine if they qualify for a reward. The Kard Portal introduces a new field on the Reports page, “Under Review,” which gives partnering issuers visibility into which transactions are awaiting manual review. 

• Once a transaction has been selected for manual review, the status will be marked as “PENDING.” As transactions move through the manual review process and are either approved or rejected for a reward, they change to a “COMPLETED” status to indicate that the manual review process is finished. Transactions under manual review are constantly being reviewed to ensure the best possible user experience for our issuers clients and their cardholders.
• If a transaction is successfully evaluated through our near-real-time transaction matching engine, the “Under Review” field will be undefined, displaying a small dash. 

Enhancements to the Issuer Portal Experience

1. Collapsible Navigation Bar

The Kard Portal has been redesigned to deliver a crisper and more productive navigation experience by introducing the ability to collapse the main menu. When the navbar is collapsed, this addition is supplemented with clear user-friendly tags that show page names when relevant icons on the navbar are hovered over. 

2. Improvements to “Status” field across portal pages 

• Coloration on Merchants and Offers pages: The Kard Portal was visually refreshed to help highlight each of the three statuses (active, inactive, closed) of relevant merchants and offers shown for a more user-friendly experience.

• Increased search and sorting options on Merchants and Offers pages: Issuer clients can now search by multiple statuses at the same time, as well as sort the statuses to better understand their rewards program data on the portal. 

3. Commission Clarity for Rewarded Transactions on Reports page 

Language for the commission received for each party (Kard, issuer) was improved, to provide better readability for partnering issuer clients.

Enhancements to Kard API Documentation

1. The Issuer Earned Reward webhook documentation was updated to showcase both sample cardlinked reward webhook responses and also sample affiliate reward webhook responses, providing more clarity to our integrating issuer clients regarding the two offer types. See Issuer Earned Reward Webhook API docs here.
2. UTC timezone specification language was added to the response schemas of all Rewards API endpoints (Merchants, Offers, and Locations). This will help our integrating issuer partners better understand the data available to them from the API. Refer to Rewards API docs here.‍
3. Audit Code definitions and transaction audit API docs were revamped to match audit code definitions that exist on the issuer portal for better consistency. Refer to the updated audit code definitions docs here and transaction audit API docs here.

June 2023

Enhancements to Issuer Portal Experience

Version 1.9 of the Issuer Portal has been launched, featuring new functionalities that make it easier for our issuer partners to navigate and understand their rewards platform.

• Better visibility into targeted offers: The “isTargeted” field was added to the “Offers” page in the issuer portal (see screenshot below), allowing users to filter offers based on whether they are targeted or global. 

• Transaction support submission optimizations: The language on the Issuer Portal regarding transaction support submissions has been updated for increased process clarity.

Enhancements to the Kard Rewards API 

Version 1.29 of the Kard Rewards API has been launched, allowing issuers more flexibility in how they design their cardholders’ rewards experience.

• Launch of “isTargeted” field: Added ability for issuers to view and filter offers based on whether they are targeted or global, using the offers API endpoints. Please refer to the API docs (see “isTargeted” field) for more details.
• Merchant category filtering now available using “category” field: New functionality allows issuers to easily filter by merchant category when dealing with merchant API endpoints, offer API endpoints, and location API endpoints. Please refer to the API docs (see “category” field) for more details.

Enhancements to Matching Engine

The Kard matching engine was improved to support merchant category code (MCC) level matching, enabling our merchant partners to run more flexible campaigns on the Kard platform. This allows our merchants to specify redemption criteria on specific purchase categories when curating their campaigns.

May 2023

• Portal Enhancements: New functionalities were added to the Kard Admin portal to allow offers to launch more efficiently.
• ‍API Documentation Updates: API documentation was corrected and enhanced to be more up to date with Kard’s functionality.
• ‍Matching Algorithm Optimizations: We introduced changes to our matching algorithm to increase both speed and accuracy of reward matches.

April 2023

• Various product updates to improve stability and user experience.

March 2023

Portal UX Enhancements: New capabilities were added to the Kard Admin portal to improve the offers and locations loading experience for our internal team. Additionally, UX improvements were released to the Issuer portal. 

1. Advanced multi-select and filtering on geographic fields (city, state, zip code) on the Locations page
2. Increased visibility into commission type and total commissions to our issuer partners for each offer on the Offers page

Local Transaction Matching Enhancements: The algorithm was improved for increased precision on matching transactions to our local offers network.

API Documentation Updates: API documentation was corrected to provide a more accurate description for the BIN field within the cardInfo object in the request body schema for the add card and create user endpoints. Kard requires that a valid BIN of the first 6 digits is sent in the request payload.

February 2023

‍User Eligibility: Released new functionality that allows our partners to better personalize the experience for their cardholders and ensure they have access to their most relevant offers based on purchasing history. Cardholders will no longer need to rely on the terms & conditions to determine if they are eligible to redeem an offer as all offers served to the cardholder are ones they are eligible for.

January 2023

Portal Enhancements: New functionalities were added to the Kard Admin portal to allow offers to launch more efficiently. In addition, UX improvements were made to the Issuer portal.

December 2022

Various product updates to improve stability and user experience.

November 2022

Audience Engine 1.0: Kard’s new audience engine enables our internal team to segment our partnering issuers' cardholders based on their previous purchase history at our partnering national merchants. This allows our merchants to run flexible, targeted campaigns and allows our issuers to provide a personalized user experience by connecting their cardholders to the relevant CLO’s.

Audience Transaction Matching Improvements: Additional logic checks were added to the matching algorithm to ensure cardholders within a segment are able to redeem relevant offers.

API Documentation Updates: API documentation was corrected to provide more accurate descriptions for the createdDate and lastModifiedDates fields in the response schema for the get rewards merchants endpoints. In addition, the preferredContactEmail is now a required field for the create audit request endpoint.

Portal UX Enhancements: Functionalities were added to support offer targeting and audience creation for our internal teams, allowing faster brand launches. In addition, searching, filtering and sorting functionalities across modals within the issuer portal were revamped to provide a more consistent, user-friendly experience:

1. Enhanced filtering experience on Merchant Categories
2. Minor UX bug fixes related to latency, error messaging, and page navigation

October 2022

• Various product updates to improve stability and user experience.

September 2022

• Kard Issuer Portal (Read Only) - The Kard Portal experience for Issuers will provide Issuer partners more visibility into Kard’s reward ecosystem and their transaction data. It will also enable partners to submit & track support requests on a centralized UI.

August 2022

• Audit Support Form Added to Portal - Portal users will now have the ability to submit an audit support request directly in the Kard portal on the Transactions Support Page (limited to internal users until full Portal launch).

Image: Submit Support Request on Transaction Support Page

July 2022

• Deprecate Legacy Services - Kard has officially sunset its original rewards endpoints. Unless otherwise discussed, all current and prospective clients are using the latest endpoints, highlighted here. The official sunset decreases maintenance for our development team.

• Merchant Onboarding - An update to the merchant onboarding process allows Kard to launch merchants with greater efficiency, providing a better end user experience. 

June 2022

• Card Overlap - To accommodate our Issuer partners who link cards that are not their own to their rewards program, Kard has built functionality that identifies instances of card overlap, so that one card cannot be used in two rewards programs. By default, if an overlap is identified, the program sponsored by the card’s issuer is utilized.
• Matching Algorithm Enhancements - The algorithm now adds more transactions to its database for comparison and matching of future transactions, increasing the efficiency of the process.

• Transaction Inquiry Management - A module was added to Kard’s internal portal to allow tracking and updates of any transaction that requires further investigation if it did not redeem an offer as expected. It provides faster triage and communication. This module will be part of the first Issuer Portal release, in Q3.

• Matching Engine Performance - To stay ahead of Kard’s scaling platform, enhancements were added to the matching engine, increasing throughput by ~500%, to ensure matching in near real-time, regardless of the number of transactions moving through the product.
• API Documentation Updates - API documentation updates including details on pagination and specifications to the incoming transactions call. Kard is constantly improving documentation to improve clarity.

May 2022

• Qualification Fields on API - Surfaced all offer qualifications, such as Minimum Transaction Amount, to relevant Rewards API endpoints. This enables our issuer partners to highlight those fields separately to the end user, outside the terms and conditions, making for a more clear user experience.

April 2022

• Various product updates to improve stability and user experience.

March 2022

• Marqeta Integration - Kard has completed an integration to Marqeta’s APIs for the purpose of significantly reducing the integration effort required by an Issuer to add Kard’s services to their offering. Via the integration, Kard and Marqeta take ownership of tracking and communicating cardholder, card, and transaction data, so this data is not required to be passed from the Issuer to Kard. Review the Kard docs site for additional details.
• Full Transaction Reporting via Portal - The Transactions module within the Kard Portal now reports on all relevant transactions, allowing for an accurate view of the data the platform ingests. Currently, this is only for internal Kard users, but we plan to release this functionality to our Issuer Partners in the coming months.
• Affiliate Integration Enhancements - Updates to the integration with Kard’s affiliate partner means that we can decrease the time and effort needed to have our issuer partners go live with Affiliate / Digital offers.

February 2022

• Various product updates to improve stability and user experience.

January 2022

• Transaction Matching Algorithm MID Improvements - The transaction matching algorithm has added additional logic to identify potential redeemed rewards.

• Search for Offers by Latitude / Longitude - The Get Locations endpoint can now filter by geolocation, with a radius measured in miles. This allows an issuer to implement a more precise user experience for cardholders using map functionality to find offers nearby.

Offer Launching Improvements – New functionalities were added to the Kard Admin portal to continually improve offer launches for the best merchant experience.

1. Experimentation Automation – The Kard platform is creating easier flows to activate experimentation use cases, specifically automating the identification of control and exposed groups for incremental measurement that provides more data points to show the effectiveness of brand campaigns.

2. Name Search for Merchants, Offers and Locations on Portal – For improved usage, the search bar on the Merchants, Offers and Locations pages now supports both name search and ID search for our issuer clients. The name search performs a partial name match search (see example on the Offers Page in screenshot below) and the ID search performs an exact match search (the ID must be entered in full to get accurate results).

For example, searching by “BaaS” in the search box will return all offers that contain “BaaS” in its name. This name search functionality now exists on the Merchants, Offers and Locations pages.‍

3. Offer Launching Improvements - New capabilities around our process of loading valid locations of offers were added to the Kard Admin portal to enable faster, and more efficient targeted offer launches for the best client experience.

1. Impression Tracking via Kard API – Our merchant partners are always looking for additional data points to measure the success of their campaigns. Tracking how many impressions (unique views) a card-linked offer produces is useful information to identify how cardholders are interacting with a rewards program and can be used for best practices in program design. This data can now be tracked via the Kard API, without any additional lift from our issuing partners.

Note: This is only valid for our national brands at this time.

‍2. “Offers Near You” Distance Sorting via Kard API – The Get Eligible Locations API now automatically sorts the returned in-store offer data from near to far distance, given latitude and longitude coordinates as a query parameter. This eases the integration effort for our issuer partners when creating their rewards app experiences, and allows partners to display the most geographically relevant offers to their cardholders.

Note: Refer to the sample fintech app experience below showing an “Available Offers” section with offers sorted by near to far distance.