Consumers today crave intriguing products, instant access and perfectly
tailored solutions and services. And they're willing to pledge their
loyalty to the companies and brands most able to meet their requirements.
This .com-powered trend has spawned libraries full of new marke-ting
theories, and has sent both consumer and business-to-business marketers
scrambling to find the next great idea to attract and retain customers.
As a result, card personalization as an art, science or industry is
headed for major change. Digital imaging is already changing the rules
and longstanding paradigms associated with card printing. Laser engra-ving
is turning plastic cards into the medium of choice for national IDs
and other documents with high-security needs. And smart cards are on
the verge of changing - and streamlining - the way we access products,
services and privileges.
Brilliant, beautiful cards - digital imaging goes mainstream
Until recently, card issuers basically had two options for getting
full-color images pre-printed on cardstock for outdoor enthusiasts,
college alumni, professional sports fans or other affinity groups. They
either had multiple card designs printed in small quantities and absorbed
the costs of traditional offset printing, or adhered to high quantity
requirements that left them with vast inventories of cardstock to manage.
Traditional offset printing techno-logy simply is not economical or
practical for runs under 30,000 cards. But new, full-color digital systems
have revolutionized the economics of customized card printing in lower
quantities, opening profitable new opportunities for card plants and
card issuers alike.
New digital card printing presses add the speed and efficiency of desktop
publishing to the high-speed productivity of an offset press. Cost-per-card
is significantly lower than offset printing for runs under 30,000, and
the image quality is excellent. The key to digital card printing is
an electronic workflow. Traditional offset printing requires film, plates
and substantial press setup time. A typical job takes about four to
eight weeks and really doesn't offer card issuers an opportunity to
print multiple card designs in a single run.
Digital card presses eliminate the need for film, plates and press
setup. Images are sent to a digital press directly from a server, hard
drive or removable media. The system prints cards immediately after
it receives image data - proofs are done on press in real time, saving
hours or days in the production schedule. The process is instant, electronic
and can deliver up to 20,000 cards per hour.
This productivity, combined with the ability to cost-effectively print
short runs, has provided card issuers with a powerful marketing tool.
For example, a soccer team could win a championship one day and a telecommunications
company could use a digital card press to print and enable phone cards
featuring a photo of the winning goal in just a few days. Cards could
then be marketed to the team's fan base.
Printing full-color, highly personalized cards on demand
Digital card presses are designed predominantly for installation in
card plants. But there are also emerging digital systems that allow
card issuers to print full-color, edge-to-edge images on plastic cards
- and individually personalize each of them - on demand.
These on-demand custom printing systems fit more appropriately in the
category of card personalization equipment, so they'll likely be installed
and operated in service bureaus or within the walls of an in-house card
issuance operation.
Like digital card presses, these on-demand custom printing systems
use an electronic workflow to print cards. There are no films or plates.
Images go directly from a hard drive or removable media to the system
for printing.
The systems first digitally merge photos, artwork, fixed data and individual
cardholder information. Next, they print images onto a transfer material,
then bond the images to a plastic card using heat and pressure. This
process makes it equally cost-effective to print cards for an audience
of one or one thousand.
The end result is a high-impact, highly personalized card that enables
card issuers to meet consumer demand for customized products and services
- and seize the power of one-to-one marketing.
On-demand capabilities and print volumes of up to 1,000 cards per hour
make systems like these ideal for mid-volume, fast-turn jobs. For example,
credit card issuers can give cardholders the option of selecting which
background photo or illustration is printed on their cards. Retailers
can capitalize on seasonal or cultural events to create high-impact
gift or loyalty cards. Or membership programs can offer different images
on fully personalized cards at different locations.
Laser-sharp protection against forgery and fraud
The use of plastic cards for national IDs, border-crossing cards, drivers
licenses and high-security employee badges is on the rise. Part of this
increase is due to new security-enhancing technologies, such as laser
engraving. These new technologies are providing government agencies
and other security-minded organizations with the tools they need to
issue secure, tamper-evident cards.
Laser engraving systems allow card issuers to permanently engrave 1,600-dpi
text, microprinting, bar codes, logos, signatures, fingerprints and
photos on their cards. While these systems have been used extensively
to produce secure IDs in Europe, they're just beginning to gain broad
acceptance in other parts of the world.
Typically with these systems, a diode-pumped laser permeates the surface
layers of ABS, polycarbonate or PVC cards and engraves images at a substrate
level. Engraved images are extremely durable and they resist chemicals
and withstand physical contact. Alteration is nearly impossible without
destroying the card.
An intelligent approach to smart card issuance
With telecommunications, transportation, government and financial institutions
leading the way, smart cards will soon become part of daily life on
a global basis. While parts of Europe and Asia adopted smart cards long
ago, other parts of the world - most notably the United States - have
resisted the technology.
But soon, consumers everywhere will carry co-branded, co-marketed,
multi-purpose smart cards that allow them to access a variety of products,
privileges and services. These multi-application smart cards will feature
financial, healthcare, telecommunications, travel and personal identification
functionalities, just to name a few.
The initial personalization process presents a new set of challenges
for card issuers and service bureaus. Even those who have experienced
smart card personalization will have to learn how to load multiple applications
and issue cards in volume.
And that's just the beginning, because multi-application smart cards
will require well-orchestrated management over time. Consumers will
continually add, delete and upgrade applications on their cards. And
they will expect the process to be fast, secure and extremely convenient.
New, multi-application architecture software for smart card persona-lization
provides card issuers with products and services they need for initial
issuance of multi-application smart cards - and complete lifecycle management
once cards are in consumers' hands.
This standardized architecture has already been endorsed by MasterCard
International for issuance of MULTOS™ cards and by Visa International
for issuance of Open Platform (OP) cards. It also supports other common
smart card schemes, such as Visa Cash, CEPS, Proton, GeldKarte and a
variety of GSM and PKI applications.
The process introduces the powerful concept of generic application
loading. Today, card issuers use unique card personalization programs
for each application that's loaded onto a smart card. The multi-application
architecture uses one card personalization process to load and customize
virtually any application, which makes the process much simpler and
easier to manage.
The architecture supports centra-lized personalization and distributed
card issuance, and will provide a variety of post-issuance processes
in the future. This makes it a good fit for any multi-application card,
whether it's issued by a financial institution, retailer or telecommunications
company. The system adapts to however the card issuer wants to personalize
and distribute cards.
Conclusion
One of the encouraging aspects of digital imaging, laser engraving,
card lifecycle management and other new plastic card-related technologies
is convergence. The same technologies that are opening new doors for
marketers are also making life easier for operations people. Not long
ago, this wasn't the case. Card issuance concepts that intrigued marketers
typically presented cost or productivity problems for the people who
managed the operations side.
But these new technologies seem to offer something for everyone. Digital
printing reduces costs and lead times on the operations side, and it
enables customization and differentiation from a marketing perspective.
Multi-application smart cards give operations departments the opportunity
to elevate card issuance from a rote, highly mechanical activity to
an intelligent, software-driven process - and marketing departments
get an opportunity to create entirely new portfolios of products and
services.
It truly is a revolutionary time in the plastic card business. There's
more change, more progress and more innovation going on right now than
in the past 25 years combined.
Card issuers, service bureaus and card plants who capitalize on these
new technologies will create strong differentiation and competitive
advantage in the increasingly consumer-centric, .com-driven world in
which we live and work.