Here’s a stat that should wake up every card issuer: 84% of digital transactions in the U.S. happen with payment methods people have already saved online.
If your card isn’t stored on file at Amazon, Netflix, or wherever your customers actually spend money, you’re basically sitting on the sidelines watching someone else rack up interchange fees.
Enter Fiserv and Strivve, who just announced a partnership that tackles this exact problem head-on.
The Card-on-File Problem Nobody Talks About
Think about your own behavior for a second. When was the last time you manually typed in your card number to buy something online? Exactly. We all just use whatever card we saved months (or years) ago. That’s great for convenience, but it’s a nightmare for card issuers trying to grow their piece of the digital payments pie.
Most issuers don’t have a scalable way to get their cards saved where their cardholders actually shop and pay bills. Until now, anyway.
What This Partnership Does
Fiserv — a global payments and fintech heavyweight that supports 1.1 billion accounts and works with 26 of the top 50 credit issuers in North America — is teaming up with Strivve to give its Issuer Solutions clients access to something called the Top of Wallet® platform.
Here’s how it works: Cardholders open their issuer’s mobile app or website, select the merchants and bill pay sites they use, and Strivve’s automation platform (powered by agentic AI) does the heavy lifting. It navigates each site and enters the card details on the cardholder’s behalf. The whole thing takes seconds, and there’s no need for complex merchant integrations.
The results speak for themselves. At Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, Strivve’s platform hit a 96% card-placement success rate and delivered a 12x return on investment. Issuers typically see measurable bumps in transaction volume within 90 days.
Why This Matters for Issuers
This partnership extends the capabilities of Fiserv’s Optis platform, which already serves some of the biggest names in card issuing. But having great infrastructure doesn’t mean much if your cards aren’t being used. Strivve ensures cards get saved where people actually spend money, which also amplifies the performance of other Fiserv solutions like rewards programs, virtual cards, and tokenization.
“Card issuers are focused on growing interchange revenue and deepening cardholder engagement in an increasingly competitive digital payments environment,” said Paul Cressman, VP of Communications, Strategy and Channels at Fiserv. “Strivve’s Top of Wallet platform gives our Issuer Solutions clients a proven, scalable way to get their cards saved where their cardholders spend — complementing the capabilities they already rely on through our Optis platform.”
The Bigger Picture
Strivve’s CEO and Co-Founder Chris Hopen put it this way: “Fiserv serves the largest and most sophisticated card issuers in North America, and this partnership puts Strivve’s technology in front of the institutions where card-on-file placement delivers the greatest impact. Every card lifecycle event — new issuance, reissuance, co-brand launch, portfolio conversion — is a revenue opportunity. Our platform ensures issuers capture that opportunity from day one.”
The company already works with more than 200 issuers across co-brand and retail banking card programs, and it holds issued patents covering its AI and machine learning algorithms built specifically for card-on-file placement. They also own the registered trademark Top of Wallet® — the only such trademark in the payments industry.
The Bottom Line
In the battle for digital wallet supremacy, being the card on file isn’t just an advantage — it’s basically everything. This partnership gives Fiserv’s issuer clients a practical, proven way to win that position at scale, turning every card lifecycle event into an opportunity to capture more transaction volume and keep cardholders engaged.
And in a world where most of us can’t remember the last time we pulled out a physical wallet to shop online, that’s the kind of advantage that actually moves the needle.
Related:
Fiserv Launches Content Next to Accelerate AI-Driven Content Management and Workflow Optimization for Financial Institutions
Strivve Brings One-of-a-Kind Cardholder Experiences as CUNA Strategic Services Newest Alliance Provider