Cards

Every account comes with free debit cards. Issue a new card as virtual or physical, with optional custom spending limits. Debit cards give you an extra layer of payment protection: paying a vendor by card or making an online purchase is disputable through the card networks, and Lemma automatically blocks high-risk transactions. Wires and ACH transfers don’t come with those protections once the money leaves your account.

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Who can do what

Card management is limited to Owner and Accounting banking roles. Read-only members can hold a card and see their own transactions, but cannot issue, change, freeze, rename, or activate a card, including their own. Because limit changes, freezes, and activation are Owner or Accounting only, a cardholder cannot raise their own limit, unfreeze their own card, or activate a physical card that arrived in their own mail.

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Why pay with a debit card

Use a Lemma debit card for vendor payments and online purchases whenever the option exists:

• Payment protection. Card payments can be disputed through the card networks, so a bad charge or a vendor that doesn’t deliver is recoverable in a way a completed wire or ACH usually isn’t.
• Fraud protection. Lemma automatically declines high-risk transactions, and you can freeze the card instantly if anything looks off.
• Bounded exposure. A card only spends the cash in its funding account, and per-transaction and total-spend limits cap how much a single charge or a bad week can cost you.
• Instant issuance. Virtual card numbers are usable the moment they’re created, so you can pay a new vendor or place an online order without waiting for a physical card.

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Virtual and physical cards

• Virtual cards — available instantly after creation. Use them for online purchases or anywhere a physical card isn’t required.
• Physical cards — a branded card mailed to your address, arriving in an estimated 5-7 business days. The card number is visible as soon as you issue it, so online purchases work right away. In-person purchases stay blocked until you activate the card after it arrives.

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Issuing a card

Open Issue new card and fill in:

• Cardholder — any team member with a banking role. Read-only members can be cardholders, which lets you manage their spending without granting them access to the account.
• Card nickname — how you’ll recognize the card in the cards list and on transactions.
• Card type — virtual or physical. Each cardholder can hold one physical card per entity, so the physical option is unavailable when the selected cardholder already has one. Virtual cards are unlimited.
• Funding account — the account the card spends from. Preselected to the account with the most available cash.
• Spending limits — optional per-transaction and total-spend caps (see below).

For a physical card, you’ll also confirm the name printed on the card, the delivery address, and a delivery phone number.

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Tracking and activating a physical card

A physical card ships USPS and arrives in an estimated 5-7 business days. Its number works for online purchases from the moment you issue it, but the card declines in-person purchases until someone activates it, so activate the card as soon as it arrives. Open the card from the cards page to follow the shipment.

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Activating the card

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If the card doesn’t arrive

Don’t activate a card you haven’t physically received. If a card is lost in transit, cancel it and issue a new one.

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Spending limits

Lemma automatically blocks high-risk transactions. Card spending is always capped at the available cash in the linked account. On top of that, you can set two optional limits when issuing a card:

• Max purchase amount — declines any single purchase above a set dollar amount.
• Max total spend — caps total spend across a day, week, or month. Limits reset at UTC midnight. If you live on the east coast, that means your daily card limit resets at 7PM EST.

If both limits are on, a purchase must fit within both, or it’s declined.

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Managing your cards

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Changing limits on a card you already have

You do not have to get the limits right when you issue the card. Open the card, click the ... button at the top-right, and select Update limits to change either limit, switch one off, or add one you skipped. New transactions are checked against the new limits as soon as you save. If you switch both limits off, the debit card approves any purchase up to the cash available in its bank account.

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Freezing cards

Freeze a card to instantly block new transactions. Freezing preserves its spending limits and transaction history, so unfreezing puts the card back exactly as it was. To unfreeze, follow the same steps and select Unfreeze card. The card resumes approving transactions within its existing spending limits. Only Owner or Accounting members can freeze or unfreeze a card, including their own. If a cardholder loses a card and doesn’t have those permissions, they need an Owner or Accounting teammate to freeze it for them.

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Renaming a card

The nickname is how you’ll recognize a card on the cards page and against its transactions. To change the nickname, open the card’s page and click the pencil beside its name. The new name shows up everywhere the old one did, including on transactions that already happened.

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Cancelling cards

Cancel a card when you want to permanently stop it, for example when an employee leaves or a physical card is lost. Cancelling cannot be undone. If you only need to pause spending temporarily, freeze the card instead. Cancelling covers the physical card too, so a card cancelled while in the mail can never be activated, even after it lands. Delivery tracking and the Activate card button both disappear from a cancelled card’s page. Only users with Owner or Accounting banking permissions can cancel a card.

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Review all of your entity’s cards

The cards page shows every card issued in your legal entity. The table gives you an overview of all cardholders, their card nicknames, and whether each card is virtual or physical.

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Cards for software and AI agents

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Cards issued by connected software

If you’ve linked software to Lemma which is authorized to issue virtual cards on your behalf, those cards show up alongside your own, with cardholder names reading “Managed by Platform Name”. Such a card belongs to the software that issued it, so it keeps the name and spending limits that software gave it — the pencil and the Update limits menu item aren’t offered on its page. Everything else works the same: you can review its transactions and freeze it like any other card.

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Virtual cards for AI agents

Issue a virtual card with spending limits to safely share payment credentials with an AI agent. You can cancel the card at any time if something looks off. Do you have multiple AI agents? Since Lemma debit cards only spend the cash in the linked account, they never borrow funds like a credit card. That makes it easy to cap your total exposure by opening a dedicated bank account for AI agent spending. For example, let’s say you have three AI agents. Open an “AI spending” account and fund it with $10,000 — the most you’re willing to spend across all your agents. Then issue three separate cards for each agent, each with its own $5,000 limit. Any one agent can spend up to $5,000, and your total exposure across all agents is still only $10,000 instead of $15,000.