Astra and Cross River Bank partners to launch A2A transfers

As the world moves more towards commercial payments digitization, instant payment transfers would become a norm and in this aspect, direct payment transfers from one card to another are crucial.

In such, California based API technology company Astra has partnered with Cross River Bank to launch a card-to-card instant payment API. Through this, the collaboration would enable the financial technology developers to fund and facilitate deposits via the debit card payment rails.

“Astra’s new instant payment API gives fintech developers the ability to easily embed card-to-card transfers into their own application, for the first time without the need for any additional infrastructure. The funds are instantly applied to the destination card,” said Gil Akos, CEO of Astra, Inc.

The CEO also makes the bold claim that “Never before have developers been able to leverage card payment rails like Visa to instantly transfer cash between debit cards”.

The fintech products would have the ability to choose between the several payment options while processing account-to-account (A2A) transactions via ACH or traditional card processing services but with this new solution provided by the collaboration, developers would be able to process payments from one debit card to another without the need for settlement accounts or developing reconciliation operations.

It also notes that the solution provided is PCI compliant by default and the integration ensures developers have limited liability for card sensitive data.

Astra is a San Francisco headquartered provider of bank-to-bank transfer technology for financial institutions, fintechs, and enterprises while Cross River Bank is a New Jersey-based commercial bank founded in 2008 in the United States which is an FDIC member and operates under the New Jersey charter.

Astra didn’t respond to CPI requests for information on the level of interchange fees charged by card issuers or networks if the users transfer funds from one card to another.

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