Card Modes
A card mode determines the funds that the card has access to.
Weavr Multi supports two card modes:
- Prepaid mode – the card has a balance and purchases are authorised on the basis of this balance
- Debit mode – the card accesses the balance of a managed account
You can create virtual and physical cards in prepaid and debit modes.
You configure the card mode in the card profile to indicate how cards created using this profile will behave. You can offer both card modes to your customers by configuring different card profiles in your application.
You cannot change the card mode after you create the card.
When you create a card using the Weavr Multi API, the card profile that you select will determine whether the card mode is prepaid or debit.
Prepaid Mode
Cards using the prepaid mode have their own balance and can be topped up with funds. A purchase transaction is authorised only if there are enough funds on the card’s balance to cover for that purchase. If there are insufficient funds on the card’s balance, the purchase is declined until the card has sufficient funds.
Since cards in prepaid mode hold funds, they support transactions such as the transfer and send transactions, which you can use to move money between different instruments.
Debit Mode
In contrast to the prepaid mode, cards that use the debit mode do not have a balance of their own. Instead, debit cards are linked to the parent managed account and the system uses the linked account’s balance to authorise and settle purchases registered on the card.
You can restrict the amount of funds that are available to spend by specifying a spend limit on the card via the spend controls.
You can only use debit cards for purchases if the parent account has sufficient balance and the debit card is within its own limit. Otherwise, purchases will not be approved. The send and transfer transactions do not support cards in debit mode because these cards do not have a balance from which funds can be transferred.
A managed account can have an unlimited number of cards linked to it, while a card can only be linked to one account. All cards linked to a managed account share the funds available on the managed account on a first-come, first-serve basis.
You can only link a card to a managed account with the same currency.