New hardware installed for flexible manufacturing of bespoke cards
27 September 2016 – Thames Card Technology Ltd has expanded its retransfer manufacturing capabilities in response tomarket demand for the production of co-branded or personalised cards fromprogram managers, issuers and card processors. The new hardware, a combinationof XID 8300 and XID 9300 machines, reduces the time to market and cost ofproducing a range of bespoke cards by 50%.
Paul Underwood, ManagingDirector of Thames Card Technology explains: “We have significantly streamlinedthe process of issuing co-branded and personalised cards, and we’re seeing somereally interesting uses for the technology. For example, end users can now addtheir own photos to their payment cards and we’re seeing a lot of growth incombined prepaid and photo-ID cards for students. Our customers across the UK,US, Europe and the Middle East are already seeing the benefits of thistechnology and the demand looks set to grow.”
To realise these timeand cost savings, a stock of pre-prepared cards is produced for each customer.These might include a chosen design, corporate branding and even a paymentscheme brand logo, depending on the use-case. As part of the issuance process,the remaining white space on the card is overprinted with the additional image,branding or information before a protective layer is added to maximizedurability.
The machinery is now inplace to produce cards for a diverse set of use cases, including photo ID,student, secure access, corporate ID, loyalty and gift cards in addition topersonalised credit, debit and prepaid payment cards. An increasing proportionof Thames’ card production output will benefit from this technology, with ananticipated 15,000 cards per week using this technology over the next 12months.
Thames Card Technologyis one of the UK’s largest manufacturers of plastic cards for uses includingpayment, gifting, loyalty and membership. Visit the website,watch our short video or read the latest blog posts for more information.