How to choose

Which program model? Five questions

1. What card, for whom? For consumer debit and prepaid, the bank's size decides the interchange. Credit and commercial cards aren't capped by Durbin, so for them I'd choose a bank on risk appetite and balance sheet.
2. Where does the money sit? A pooled account at the bank with your ledger on top is the usual answer for debit and prepaid. Decide early whether the ledger lives with you, your processor or a platform, because moving it later is a migration.
3. How soon, and how custom? If you need cards in weeks, issue stock or virtual cards on a platform. A custom design, your own bank relationship, physical plastic and push provisioning each add weeks to months.
4. What will each card spend? A primary account spends thousands of dollars a month; a payout or payroll card might spend a few hundred. Minimums and fixed fees punish low-spend programs, so model the spend before the term sheet.
5. Where are your cardholders? In the US, the Durbin exemption shapes the product. In Canada, in-store debit earns almost nothing and fintech accounts ship as prepaid cards. In the UK and EU a fintech can hold an e-money licence and issue without a sponsor bank, under capped interchange.

My defaults: for a US consumer program under a few hundred thousand cards, a sponsor bank under $10 billion in assets, ideally two, with a clean enforcement record and a contract that says what happens if it crosses the threshold. For a software platform adding cards to its product, start with embedded issuing on virtual and stock cards, and add custom plastic later. Keep the ledger somewhere the bank can read every day, in a format you could hand to a new bank. And read the exit clauses before the pricing.