About Account Level Management

Earn the right interchange on every card. Lithic manages Account Level Management with Mastercard and Visa on your behalf — so qualifying accounts are rewarded without you ever touching network mechanics.

Account Level Management (ALM) is a set of Mastercard and Visa services that let card issuers manage interchange, benefits, and program assignment at the level of the individual account (PAN) rather than uniformly across a BIN or account range. By recognizing each account's product and spend, the networks let premium and spend-qualified cards earn differentiated interchange when accounts meet the networks' spend requirements — the economics that typically fund the rewards, benefits, and services you offer your cardholders.

The uplift is conditional, not automatic. As Visa puts it, an issuer "can receive higher interchange for the product if the cardholder spends a certain amount each year." Each network periodically assesses spend and can upgrade accounts that reach a qualification tier — or downgrade accounts that fall short.

What Lithic does for you. As your issuer-processor, Lithic handles the network-side mechanics of ALM end to end across both Mastercard and Visa — registering your cards, submitting program and linking information, and keeping it current as cards move through their lifecycle. You never manage program identifiers, group IDs, or network message fields. Your only job is to keep your card relationships accurate — more on that below.

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ALM is available only in select regions and countries, and interchange modifications apply to intracountry transactions as determined by your country of license. Availability for your program is a network decision — your Lithic representative can confirm what applies to you.

How ALM works

When ALM is enabled for your program, Lithic submits each card's account number to the relevant network as the card moves through its lifecycle — issued, reissued, replaced, updated, or closed — along with the linking information that tells the network which cards belong together for spend aggregation.

The network then:

1. Assigns each account to its program and product, so transactions receive the correct product-based interchange.
2. Periodically assesses spend against the product's requirements and applies any upgrade or downgrade for the next assessment period.
3. Aggregates spend across an account's linked cards, so the account is assessed on its combined spend.

Some of this is processed in near real time and some in batch. Newly issued cards receive grace-period interchange until they are first assessed. You don't orchestrate any of it — Lithic submits the data and keeps it current.

Premium and spend-qualified products

Each network defines its own premium and spend-qualified products — for both consumer and small-business credit — and each carries its own requirements (such as a minimum level of rewards value and annual spend) and prior network approval before your program can offer it. Examples include Mastercard World and World Elite, and Visa Signature and Infinite tiers. Which products your program can offer, and their exact requirements, are established with the network during onboarding.

How spend qualification works

Spend qualification is performed by the networks, not by Lithic. The mechanics below explain how qualification affects the interchange your program earns. Exact thresholds, tiers, and cadence are defined by each network and published in their interchange bulletins — they change over time, so treat the descriptions here as the shape of the process, not fixed figures.

Consumer credit

The networks monitor whether premium consumer accounts meet their spend requirements. Accounts that qualify earn the premium product's differentiated interchange; accounts that fall short can be moved to a lower interchange tier for a period before they are re-assessed. The cardholder keeps their card, benefits, and services — only the interchange the account earns changes.

Small business

Small-business credit accounts can qualify for tiered interchange based on their aggregated spend over a trailing period. The network reviews spend on a recurring cycle and assigns each account the interchange tier its spend supports for the next period, moving accounts up or down as spend changes.

Your role: keep card relationships accurate

ALM grouping depends on one thing from you: modeling your card relationships correctly in Lithic. Everything else — the network registrations, group identifiers, roles, and message fields — Lithic derives and manages for you. There is no separate ALM field to set.

• Associate each card with the correct account holder. That association is the signal Lithic uses to group an account holder's cards together for spend aggregation.
• Keep that mapping accurate as cards are issued, replaced, or closed.
• Getting this right is how you opt your cards into correct grouping — there is nothing else to configure.

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Because grouping is derived from these relationships, accurate relationships produce accurate grouping. Incomplete or incorrect relationships produce incorrect grouping — and therefore incorrect spend aggregation and interchange.

Enabling ALM for your program

ALM is not enabled by default. To turn it on, contact your Lithic representative. A few network prerequisites must be in place first:

Mastercard

• Your program is preapproved by Mastercard for the relevant premium / spend-qualified service and meets that product's requirements.
• The applicable BIN / account range is installed and assigned to your program.

Visa

• Your program is preapproved by Visa and meets the premium product requirements.
• A qualified program exists in Visa's Registered Program Manager, and Visa provides Lithic the program's identifier.

Once onboarding is complete, Lithic manages ALM with the networks for you — submitting and updating enrollment as your cards are issued, replaced, updated, and closed.

For more information, contact your Lithic representative or [email protected].