How much money do I need to put in the reserve account to get started issuing debit cards? – Hydrogen

All sponsor banks, program managers, and tech platforms will require you to put money into a reserve account. This is not a Hydrogen requirement, it is directly from the sponsor bank to comply with banking rules. This collateral account will be returned to you if you ever leave Hydrogen, and you can hold this amount on your balance sheet as an asset.

Consumer BIN Cards

There are two options: non-instant ACH funding (default), and instant ACH funding.

Non-Instant ACH Funding (Default)

By default, end customers will need to wait for ACH transfers to clear before they can use the cards. You are required to fund the reserve account to ensure there is enough funds in the program to account for chargebacks, and fraud.

We require that you have at least 1-day of expected end user spend in the reserve account. e.g. If you project $1,000 to be spent by your users in the next 1-day, you will be required to maintain this amount in the reserve account at all times.

Instant ACH Funding

More sophisticated companies can offer instant use of cards when an ACH is sent by a customer. Please note, this is only offered in our Transform pricing plan, and will require a thorough security and compliance review from Hydrogen. With this approach, the end customer will not have to wait for the ACH to clear to use the card. There is greater risk with this approach, because the ACH can be declined by the initiating bank.

We require that you have at least 5-days of expected end user spend in the reserve account. e.g. If you project $10,000 to be spent by your users in the next 5-days, you will be required to maintain this amount in the reserve account at all times.

Business BIN Cards

You can only offer non-instant ACH funding for Business BIN cards. This is due to the large size of the ACH transfers. Please keep 5-days of projected payments, expenses, or disbursements in the reserve account. This is to prevent you from being responsible if there is a dispute with Visa or Mastercard.

Funding the Reserve Account

The process of funding your reserve account at Hydrogen is easy. You will use our integrated ACH feature on the Hydrogen admin portal to push money from your business bank account to the Reserve Account at the sponsor bank.

Please follow the instructions on the Reserve Account funding page to confirm and link your corporate bank account and initiate the transfer. Note: there is a $100,000 limit per ACH transfer. If you have a large userbase, and need to put more than $100,000 into the Reserve Account, please break up your ACH transfers into multiple tranches.