It was my pleasure to have served a judge
for the ICMA Élan Awards for Card Manufacturing Excellence at the
ICMA EXPO in Vancouver this year: There were two non-standard card winners
out of five. The winners were:
Clearly, the ICMA members were quite captivated with a non-standard
card, but not simply because it was non-standard. The other winner of
two awards was totally standard. In a fitting tie-in, the Phone Card
Design winner is an interesting promotion of " Thinking Outside
of the Box." The card itself was ISO Standard, but the presentation
of the card in a "THINK" box and envelope was quite unique
and represented "outside of the box" thinking as well.
The Canada Immigration Card, while meeting ISO standards, was also outside
the box thinking, in that it used Optical Memory Technology for data
storage along with the longtime OCR standard for border control documents.
The latter met requirements of legacy systems while the former extended
capabilities in concert with its next door neighbor. The USA uses Optical
Memory for its immigrant card. These were combined with other security
technologies such as laser printing.
So ICMA recognized that standards are important, but non-standard cards
have a significant place in the market. Lest you believe that this is
only the judges speaking, The Peoples Choice Award is selected by the
EXPO attendees and the DISCOVER 2GO™ Card was the winner with the
Canadian Immigrant Card as a runner up.
Only three things were standard for the DISCOVER 2GO™ Card.
1. The vertical location of the mag stripe as defined by ISO 7811 (The
top of the card is a
tangent to the two radii)
2. Card Thickness, ISO 7810
3. Conformance to data formats the ISO7813 Financial Card Standard.
Obviously the card will only work in swipe readers which are the predominant
types in the POS checkout environment. It won't function in insert or
motorized readers.
The DISCOVER 2GO™ Card is targeted to people going through POS
checkouts who are in a hurry and don't want to reach in the billfolds/wallets
to use the card. Discover issues the Card to only those who request
it and also includes an ISO Standard Card with it. So, more value is
added for the card manufacturers, more convenience for cardholders.
The following week at the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC17, ID Card and Personal Identification
Standards
meetings, non-ISO standard cards also received a lot of attention. A
presentation, made on non-standard cards at the WG1 Physical Characteristics
and Test Methods meeting, was followed by intense discussion. Two lines
of thought emerged,
1. WG1 should discourage the use of non-standard cards as they will
be bad for the industry by causing problems for equipment suppliers.
2. The non-standard cards fill niches, and the issuers do not expect
them to work in all equipment.
Naturally I was promoting the second viewpoint, and by the choice of
the Élan winners, I am sure ICMA members agree with me. Don't
get me wrong, you all know I believe strongly in card standards which
have driven the card industry to its high level of success. But, there
are niches that can be met by partially conforming to standards so that
cards are readable by a limited class of terminals.
The next day of the SC17 Card Standards meeting, MasterCard discussed
its non-standard card, a card with a large radius on the lower right
hand corner. Visa is experimenting with its new mini-card as well. American
Express issues a transparent card, however, it does meet the opacity
requirements in the IR range, so it should function in all current devices.
We have seen some confusion in the marketplace when a cardholder signed
a silver mag stripe instead of the signature panel. But of course there
is no standard for mag stripe color. This is an example of an unusual
feature that does not violate any standard requirement.
Contactless IC cards have no physical restrictions (except for the
location of punch hole for attachment devices) unless they are combined
with another technology. In the USA, certain oil companies offer key
fobs as a contactless IC card.
WG1 asked its experts to discuss the situation at their national bodies,
and to present their thoughts at the next WG1 meeting to decide on any
actions in response the proliferation of non standard cards.
So what do I think about all of this? I believe that non standard cards
have a place provided they fill a niche need for the cardholder. If
a non-standard card only provides pizzazz for the card issuer without
satisfying a cardholder need, then it will disappoint and confuse the
cardholder when it fails to read. Proliferation of these types of cards
will be bad for the marketplace.
Please note that the opinions expressed here are the author's own
and have no sanctions, positive or negative, from U.S. or international
standards committees of which he is an officer and ICMA whom he represents
on the committees.