A Card-to-Card transfer (Instant Funding) is a payment method that allows funds to be transferred directly from one debit card to another debit card.

The process works sequentially and immediately:

1. First, funds are pulled from the source card (via an AFT - Account Funding Transaction)

2. Upon success of the AFT, funds are then pushed to the destination card (via an OCT - Original Credit Transaction)

Card-to-card transfers are used for various use cases, including me-to-me, peer-to-peer payments, and instant funding scenarios.

It's worth noting that Card-to-Card transfers are a separate payment type from other transfer methods like Card-to-Account or Account-to-Card transfers.

Successful Transfer Scenario

1. Routine Creation: The routine passes validations and is successfully created with a status of active (no webhook sent at this stage)

2. Transfer Creation: The routine kicks off the creation of a child Transfer object with status pending

   • This triggers a transfer_created webhook

3. Transfer Processing: Once the funds settle (both AFT from source card and OCT to destination card complete), the Transfer status changes to processed

   • This triggers a transfer_updated webhook

4. Routine Completion: The parent Routine status updates to completed

   • This triggers a routine_updated webhook

Key Points

• The routine always starts with active status when created

• Transfers are spawned asynchronously from routines (generally within a few seconds)

• For card-to-card transfers, the time between transfer_created and transfer_updated webhooks may be on the order of milliseconds since these are instant transfers

• The routine status remains active while the transfer is processing, and only updates to completed after the transfer reaches processed status

Failure Scenarios

If the transfer fails, the routine will also transition to failed status, with appropriate webhooks sent for both the transfer and routine status changes.

Automatic AFT reversals on OCT Failures

If the OCT to the destination card fails, please see the following article for details on that scenario:

📄 Card-to-Card Transfers: Automatic AFT Reversals on OCT Failures