The number of payment cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide will increase from 500m in 2023 to more than 1.3bn by 2027, according to a Juniper Research forecast.

“This growth of 170% reflects strong interest in improving the way users access and replace cards from issuers. This is in the context of strong competition between issuers from digital-only banks and new fintechs offering card services,” the researchers say.

“Modern card issuing platforms, also known as digital card issuing platforms, allow card issuers to create cards using an API (Application Programming Interface)-driven approach; enabling cards to be delivered instantly to digital wallets, with the option for a physical card, boosting flexibility, transparency and speed significantly.”

The research also incorporates Juniper’s 2023 Competitor Leaderboard for modern card issuing platform vendors that ranks Thales, Giesecke+Devrient, FIS, Fiserv and Marqeta as the top five market leaders globally “using criteria such as the completeness of their solutions and their future business prospects”.

The leaderboard also identifies Adyen, Idemia and Nexi as “established leaders” with Entrust and Stripe among the “leading challengers” in the market.

A Juniper Research forecast published in February predicted that the number of credit cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide would exceed 320m by 2027.

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