Custom Card Activation lets you fully tailor the cardholder experience using the data you already have.
Pre-requisite: Read about Card Status Lifecycle before getting into card activation pages.
How cards go from issued to spendable, and how to pick the right path for your program.
You have three options for how a card becomes usable after it's issued through the GiveCard API. Pick the one that fits your program's security posture, how you want to deliver card details to cardholders, and how much of the cardholder experience you want to own.
The three paths, and when each fits:
- Activation profiles - a configurable security gate plus branded onboarding moment. Cardholders satisfy your verification fields (DOB, applicant ID, email, ZIP, etc.) and see your custom informational page before the card can be spent. Use this when you need proof of identity or a white-labeled activation experience.
- Account link - the default for virtual cards. GiveCard emails the cardholder an activation link, or returns a link for your business to send. The cardholder creates a GiveCard account and views their card details in our cardholder portal. Use this when you don't need custom verification and you're happy with GiveCard's cardholder UI.
- No activation - no cardholder-side activation step. Physical cards ship active and can be spent as soon as they arrive. Virtual cards can be provisioned instantly and displayed inside your own portal via iframe.
Activation profiles layer on top of the account-link path: the cardholder creates their account, satisfies the profile, then the card becomes usable. If you're using the no activation path, activation profiles do not apply — there's no activation flow to gate.
Each of the three paths above links to its own page with the full details, request-body shape, and setup notes. Once you've picked a path, see the Card Status Lifecycle page for the values the card's status field can hold as it moves through activation.