Astravs
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Increase: If you want broad US rails including wires and deposit accounts, and published per transaction fees
Astra
Instant payments API for push-to-card, card-to-account and FedNow transfers
As of 31 August 2026, Astra's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. Astra moves money instantly to and from debit cards and bank accounts through a single API, with Cross River Bank as the sponsor. Softwr lists it under APIs. Astra is made by Astra, Inc., available on API, Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Astra does
Astra is an instant payments platform. It originates push-to-card disbursements as card network Original Credit Transactions so funds land on a recipient debit card in seconds, pulls funds from a debit card to fund an account, and handles account-to-account transfers over ACH and FedNow. It is sold as an API and SDK for product teams that need payouts or funding inside their own application rather than a payments business of their own. Banking and payment services are provided through Cross River Bank. What separates it from the general payout providers is the operational model around funding. Instant disbursement usually means holding money in a prefunded account so it can be pushed at any moment, which ties up working capital permanently. Astra offers a net debit arrangement where disbursements settle against a reserve and are collected afterwards, which for a company paying out continuously is a difference measured in cash on the balance sheet rather than in basis points. It also combines card rails and FedNow in one integration, so a recipient who has a debit card and a recipient who only has an account number are handled the same way in your code. Buyers are consumer fintech, gig platforms, insurance claims teams and lending products that need to pay people quickly. The trade offs are the usual instant payment ones and one specific to the sponsor. Push-to-card economics are worse than ACH per transaction and card acceptance for OCT is not universal across issuers, so a proportion of payouts fall back to slower rails. And the entire programme sits on Cross River Bank, a sponsor with concentrated fintech exposure and its own regulatory history, which is a single point of dependency worth diligencing before you build.
What people use it for
- A gig or marketplace platform paying workers to their debit cards at the end of a shift rather than on a weekly ACH cycle
- An insurer settling small claims instantly to a claimant debit card to remove the cheque process
- A lending product disbursing approved funds in seconds so the borrower experience matches the approval decision
- A consumer fintech letting users fund a new account from an existing debit card so the balance is usable immediately
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Astra.
- Push-to-card costs materially more per transaction than ACH, so a platform that switches all payouts to instant sees payment costs rise sharply, and the usual answer of charging the recipient for speed only works where recipients will pay.
- Original Credit Transaction support is not universal across card issuers, so a proportion of payouts fall back to slower rails and you must build and explain a two speed experience rather than promising instant to everyone.
- The programme depends on Cross River Bank as sponsor, a bank with concentrated fintech exposure and a documented regulatory history, so a single supervisory action on that institution is a direct operational risk to your payouts.
- Nothing is published on pricing, and per transaction economics vary by rail and volume, so small platforms cannot estimate cost before a sales conversation and have limited leverage in it.
- FedNow reach still depends on the recipient bank participating, so instant account-to-account is not available to every recipient and the routing logic has to degrade gracefully, which is more integration work than the single API framing suggests.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Astra
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- AstravsStripe
Stripe: If you need payment acceptance alongside payouts and are willing to use its own connected account model
- AstravsPlaid
Plaid: If the requirement is verifying and linking recipient bank accounts rather than moving money instantly
Pricing
What Astra costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Astra Payments
On request
- Per transaction pricing quoted by volume and rail
- Push-to-card economics differ materially from ACH
- Net debit mode available in place of prefunding
- Sponsor bank is Cross River Bank
- No published rate card
Capabilities
Features
Instant disbursements
Push-to-card payouts sent as card network Original Credit Transactions with funds available in seconds
Card to account
Pulls funds from a debit card to fund an account or wallet
Net debit mode
Settles disbursements against a reserve rather than requiring a permanently prefunded float
FedNow and RTP transfers
Instant account-to-account payments outside card rails
ACH transfers
Standard and same-day ACH for cases where cost matters more than speed
Routing logic
Chooses between card and account rails based on what the recipient supports
SDK
Client SDK for capturing and tokenising recipient card and account details
Sandbox
Test environment that simulates rail specific failures and rejections
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Who is the sponsor bank?
Cross River Bank. All banking and payment services run through that relationship, so the bank should be part of your diligence rather than an implementation detail.
Do I have to prefund payouts?
Not necessarily. Astra offers a net debit arrangement where disbursements settle against a reserve rather than a permanently funded float account, which is the main working capital argument for the product.
Is every payout instant?
No. Push-to-card requires the recipient card issuer to support Original Credit Transactions, and FedNow requires the recipient bank to participate. The rest fall back to ACH.
What does it cost?
Nothing is published. Pricing is per transaction and varies by rail and volume, and card rails cost considerably more than ACH.
Keep looking
Where to go from Astra
- Astra alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Astra pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Astra badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All APIs softwareThe full category
- Best APIs softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Astra, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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