Audience:
Single-use virtual cards
A restricted virtual card for a single transaction or a single merchant, which lets users avoid 3DS consent because of its limited scope.
Single-use virtual (SUV) cards can either be used once or for a single dedicated merchant: one time, or one place. This limited scope is what lets users avoid 3-D Secure (3DS) consent when paying with SUV cards.
SUV cards can be either one-off or recurring.
SUV cards can't be added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
One-off
In theory, one-off SUV cards work only once, for a single transaction. But it's not that straightforward: some merchants send multiple authorizations for a single debit. Pre-authorization is a good example, as the merchant pre-authorizes an amount, and then a separate transaction is created for the actual debit.
Ideally, the card issuer (you or your customer) should cancel one-off SUV cards after the expected debit has been used. Setting a spending limit is mandatory. Consider setting the expected debit amount as the spending limit, rendering the card unusable after that limit is reached.
For one-off cards, the SpendingLimit.period is Always.
One-off SUV cards automatically expire 30 days after creation: when the spending limit period is set to Always in the addSingleUseVirtualCard and addSingleUseVirtualCards mutations, Swan sets the cardContractExpiryDate to 30 days from creation.
Card status after spending limit
When a one-off SUV card reaches its spending limit, the card becomes unusable.
The card status remains Enabled, but transactions are declined once the spending limit is reached.
You can track remaining spending using the spending field in the card query.
Cancel one-off SUV cards after the expected transaction completes. Refer to canceling virtual cards for instructions.
Recurring
You can think of recurring SUV cards as single-merchant virtual cards.
The SpendingLimit.period isn't Always.
When the cardholder uses a recurring SUV card for the first time, Swan restricts the card to the merchant ID that triggered the authorization.
If the cardholder uses the card with the same merchant, the merchant IDs match, and the transaction goes through. However, if they use the card elsewhere, the merchant IDs don't match, and the transaction is rejected.
Spending limits for recurring cards
Recurring SUV cards have spending limits tied to the defined period (Daily, Weekly, or Monthly), not to individual transactions.
A recurring SUV card with a €500 weekly limit, for example, can be used multiple times with the same merchant until the €500 limit is reached within the 7-day period.
There's no restriction on the number of times a recurring card can be used with the same merchant, as long as spending stays within the limit for the defined period. By default, the spending limit resets on a rolling basis. Refer to rolling vs. calendar periods for how periods reset and hour-level aggregation for how they're calculated.
Disabling a recurring SUV cardholder's membership
When the account membership of a recurring SUV cardholder is disabled, the card is automatically reassigned to the account's legal representative and remains active, so expenses aren't interrupted and the card stays under the account's control.
Single-use virtual card expiry
Single-use virtual cards aren't automatically renewed.
One-off SUV cards expire 30 days after creation.
Recurring SUV cards expire after 3 years unless a custom cardContractExpiryDate is set.
When a recurring SUV card expires, the cardholder must create a new card and make the first payment to lock it to the merchant ID. The new card then works with the same merchant for future transactions.