Issue Your First Card

This quickstart takes an approved customer from card creation to a funded, spendable card: create the card, fund it based on your management model, and decrypt the card details for the cardholder.

Before you begin

Complete the shared setup steps: get your API keys, configure webhooks, and get your customer through compliance approval. You’ll also need to know your program type and management model, since it determines how you fund the card.

Issue a Card

Create a virtual or physical card for the approved user by calling the Create a Card endpoint.

Virtual cards are available immediately but require client-side decryption to display the PAN
Physical cards require a shipping address and activation after delivery

See Issuing Cards for configuration options and spending limits. See Push Provisioning steps to allow users to add their card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet directly from your app.

const card = await client.users.createCard(userId, {
  type: 'virtual',
});

const card = await client.users.createCard(userId, {
  type: 'physical',
  shipping: {
    line1: '123 Main St',
    city: 'San Francisco',
    region: 'CA',
    postalCode: '94105',
    country: 'United States',
    countryCode: 'US',
    phoneNumber: '+14155551234', // required
    method: 'standard',         // 'standard' | 'express' for US; 'international' for non-US
  },
});

Fund the Card

How you fund the card depends on your management model:

Rain-Managed
Partner-Managed

Retrieve the user’s smart contract address via Get Contract Info
Send supported tokens (for example, USDC) directly to the contract on-chain
The credit limit updates automatically once the deposit is confirmed

See Rain-Managed Programs for detailed instructions and code examples. See Supported Chains & Tokens for the full list of supported networks.

const contracts = await client.users.retrieveContracts(userId);
const contract = contracts[0];

if (!contract.depositAddress) {
  throw new Error('Deposit address not yet available for this contract');
}

// Send supported tokens (for example, USDC) to this address on the specified chain
console.log(`Deposit to: ${contract.depositAddress}`);
console.log(`Chain ID: ${contract.chainId}`);
// contract.tokens lists accepted ERC-20 tokens and their on-chain addresses

Decrypt and Use the Card

For virtual cards, decrypt the card PAN on the client side so the cardholder can start spending. Rain uses RSA-OAEP encryption for card data.See Viewing Encrypted Card Details for the decryption implementation guide.

import crypto from 'crypto';

// RAIN_PUBLIC_KEY: environment-specific PEM key from /docs/resource-sessionid-keys
const RAIN_PUBLIC_KEY = process.env['RAIN_PUBLIC_KEY'];

// 1. Generate a random session key
const sessionKey = crypto.randomBytes(32);

// 2. Encrypt it with Rain's RSA public key (OAEP padding)
const encryptedSessionId = crypto.publicEncrypt(
  { key: RAIN_PUBLIC_KEY, padding: crypto.constants.RSA_PKCS1_OAEP_PADDING },
  sessionKey,
).toString('base64');

// 3. Fetch the encrypted card secrets
//    Note: the param is `SessionId` (capital S, capital I)
const secrets = await client.cards.retrieveSecrets(card.id, {
  SessionId: encryptedSessionId,
});

// secrets.encryptedPan → { data: string, iv: string }
// secrets.encryptedCvc → { data: string, iv: string }
// Decrypt both fields with sessionKey using AES

What’s next

Testing in Sandbox

Simulate transactions and test your integration before going live.

Transaction Lifecycle

Understand how transactions flow from authorization to settlement.

Managing Transactions

View, authorize, and manage cardholder transactions.

Welcome

Core Concepts

Quickstart

Platform Policies

Go Live

Issue Your First Card

Before you begin

What’s next

Testing in Sandbox

Transaction Lifecycle

Managing Transactions

​Before you begin

​What’s next

Testing in Sandbox

Transaction Lifecycle

Managing Transactions

Before you begin

What’s next