Cardholder types
Cardholders are Airwallex’s representation of a human that uses a card. Depending on your use case, this could be an employee, contractor, payout recipient or someone who only has the ability to temporarily access a card belonging to your business.
Airwallex supports two types of cardholders — Delegate and Individual — each with a specific purpose. Depending on the type of cardholder you choose, the available product functionality and the requirements to create the cardholder may vary.
All cards, regardless of the card type must be associated with a cardholder(s).
| Delegate | Individual | |
|---|---|---|
| Description | A cardholder who may be assigned to non-personalized cards only and acts as an authorized user of the card. A delegate cardholder type can be updated to individual type but not vice versa. |
A cardholder who may be assigned to personalized or non-personalized cards and is a named individual who is an authorized representative of your business. |
| Suited for | Business offerings, e.g., virtual-only business cards for ecommerce spend. A good fit when non-personalized cards are sufficient for your use case. Allows you to add and remove cardholders without affecting the function of the card or other cardholders using the card. |
Business or consumer offerings for personalized products such as digital or physical card — the name of the individual will be printed on the card. |
| Personalized vs. non-personalized | Can only be assigned to non-personalized cards | Can be assigned to either non-personalized or personalized cards. When assigned to a personalized card, the card will be directly associated with the individual cardholder. |
| Onboarding | Frictionless, instantaneous onboarding (only email mandatory) | Lightweight, near instantaneous onboarding (name, date of birth, email and address mandatory) |
| Card association | Can be assigned to multiple cards | Can be assigned to multiple cards |