New hardware installed for flexible manufacturing of bespoke cards

Thames Card Technology Ltd has expanded its retransfer manufacturing capabilities in response to market demand for the production of co-branded or personalised cards from program managers, issuers and card processors. The new hardware, a combination of XID 8300 and XID 9300 machines, reduces the time to market and cost of producing a range of bespoke cards by 50%.

Paul Underwood, Managing Director of Thames Card Technology explains: “We have significantly streamlined the process of issuing co-branded and personalised cards, and we’re seeing some really interesting uses for the technology. For example, end users can now add their own photos to their payment cards and we’re seeing a lot of growth in combined prepaid and photo-ID cards for students. Our customers across the UK, US, Europe and the Middle East are already seeing the benefits of this technology and the demand looks set to grow.”

To realise these time and cost savings, a stock of pre-prepared cards is produced for each customer. These might include a chosen design, corporate branding and even a payment scheme 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 maximize durability.

The machinery is now in place to produce cards for a diverse set of use cases, including photo ID, student, secure access, corporate ID, loyalty and gift cards in addition to personalised credit, debit and prepaid payment cards. An increasing proportion of Thames’ card production output will benefit from this technology, with an anticipated 15,000 cards per week using this technology over the next 12 months.

Thames Card Technology is one of the UK’s largest manufacturers of plastic cards for uses including payment, gifting, loyalty and membership. Visit the website, watch our short video or read the latest blog posts for more information.