
Loading is the process of adding funds to a card, either a plastic card or a virtual card. Loading funds for the first time is called initializing the card, and from a reporting point of view is different to subsequent fund loading. Typically, subsequent fund loading only applies to plastic cards as digital cards tend to be load once, spend once.
The API provides 3 different ways to load:
1) Loading digital cards (via the ‘InitializeVirtualCard’ endpoint)
2) Loading physical cards (via the ‘Load’ endpoint)
3) Refunding to a physical card (via the ‘Refund’ endpoint)
The key difference between digital loading (1) and physical loading (2, 3) is the “cardNumber” is not passed in the request for digital but is for physical. In the case of digital loading the “cardNumber” is returned in the response.
For digital card loading, an expiry date can be passed in the request and will be set on the card, overriding any expiry date policy in place at a program level.
For physical card loading/refunding, an expiry date can be passed in the request and will be set on the card, overriding any expiry date policy in place at a program level, providing the load/refund is not a subsequent load/refund transaction on the card in question.
More information including details of the request/response elements as well as examples are provided in the ‘API’ section of this site.