What Does a Plastic Card Supplier Do?
From secure IDs to gift cards, plastic cards are a vital part of everyday life. They play a role in various industries, including banking, healthcare and travel.
With over 35.4 billion cards produced globally each year, ensuring their accuracy and quality is essential. Lake Image offers a variety of solutions to help card printers and attachers deliver high-quality products.
Security
Plastic cards play a crucial role in various industries, from government IDs to payment cards and personalized invitations. With over 35.4 billion cards produced globally each year, ensuring their accuracy and quality is essential.
Card security can range from basic photo identification all the way to high-security holograms. These can reduce the risk of counterfeiting while adding a sense of visual verification that identifies the card’s holder.
Some plastic card printers offer additional security features such as ghost images and watermarking. These are typically added during the printing process, but may not be visible until viewed under a black light.
The use of holograms, tamper-proof magnetic stripes and lamination material can all help protect your plastic cards from unauthorized usage. These measures can provide significant protection to your business or organization.
Another form of security is a key-controlled anti-counterfeiting feature that can be added to your card through the use of a specific ribbon with a clear overlay panel. This feature is called Holokote and comes with a built-in UltraSecure logo or can be customized with your own company’s logo.
Finally, thermal transfer overlaminate or thin film is another tamper-resistant option that is available in both clear and holographic thicknesses. These materials are less robust than some of the other overlaminates, but offer a secure, medium-security solution that’s ideal for organizations that need tamper-resistant cards with a long life span.
Lake Image Systems offers a full suite of card inspection solutions to verify variable data, sequence checking, print quality, scratch-off placements and card-to-carrier matching. Our advanced inspection technologies and deep industry expertise ensure that your plastic cards meet the exacting standards of your customers.
Durability
Card suppliers are constantly taking measures to make their cards durable and long lasting. This is especially important for organizations who are using them for access control or other security purposes. Unlike paper cards, plastic cards are much more likely to survive abrasion and harsh weather conditions.
The durability of a card will depend on its materials and the type of protection it receives during production. There are several options for protecting a card from damage, including overlay varnishes and laminates.
Overlay varnishes protect cards from abrasion, scratches and fading. They also help to create a protective layer between the image and the card’s surface, which can prevent the card from bending or warping. They are not as durable as laminate material, which can be used to provide a longer life span for a card.
Lamination is a clear, protective layer applied to the top of a card by a laminating printer. This helps to keep the card’s images and barcodes safe from abrasion, damage and wear.
A laminate can be made from a variety of materials, including polycarbonate and polyesters. They are often printed in plastic card supplier high quality and come in a range of thicknesses.
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a common choice for cards, as it is inexpensive and available in a range of colors and thicknesses. These are ideal for use with retransfer and laminating card printers, as they can withstand the high heat generated during these processes without breaking down.
Composite cards, or PVC-PET cards, are a popular choice for organizations looking to improve the durability of their ID cards. They are 60% PVC and 40% PET and can withstand the heat generated during lamination better than standard 100% PVC cards.
Card companies are also trying to find ways to replace the single-use, non-recycled plastics in their cards with environmentally friendly alternatives. Some are experimenting with corn starch, which can be made into a plastic-like material and is biodegradable. Other companies are developing cards that have a more natural feel, such as those made from wood pulp or algae.
Personalization
Personalization is the practice of tailoring a product, service, website, or other experience to an individual customer or user based on known information. It can include things like demographic information, preferences, behaviors, and buying habits, all of which are collected from a variety of sources.
Companies that implement personalization are able to deliver relevant, high-quality experiences that drive engagement and increase sales. They also build brand trust and loyalty, which can lead to repeat purchases and referrals from happy customers.
Personalized experiences also help companies understand what their customers want and expect, which can improve overall communication efforts and customer satisfaction. This means companies can plastic card supplier make the best use of data, providing customers with content and messages that are well-timed and useful.
While the term personalization has been around for a long time, it’s only recently that companies have started to take real-time customer interaction management seriously. This includes implementing solutions that allow support teams to create a more individualized experience for each person.
In order to achieve this, companies need a way to unify all of their data so they can activate the right data at the right time. This includes both offline commerce data and online consumer data.
Plastic card suppliers that specialize in personalization typically offer a wide range of tools and services for creating a more personalized card. Some of these include embossing, digital printing and thermo transfer.
Embossing is a traditional method of applying machine-readable data to the surface of plastic cards by means of an impression into the card’s surface. The process is similar to that of stamping, but the resulting images are machine-readable, making them much more durable and convenient.
Electronic personalization, on the other hand, is a far more cost-effective method of creating custom cards. It involves the creation of a database that includes information about each cardholder and the application of machine-readable data onto the surface of the card.
This process can be applied to employee and visitor badges, student and faculty IDs, gift and loyalty cards, and more. While this is a cheaper option, it offers very limited personalization and lacks the durability that true card personalization provides.
Marketing
Plastic card suppliers use a variety of marketing measures to promote their product. Some of these methods include direct mail, cross-marketing and referral programs. In addition, they provide consultative marketing support to clients, which helps them to achieve their business goals and create new sales.
These companies offer a range of promotional cards including discount, gift, membership, identification, and loyalty cards. These cards are available in different sizes, colors and designs. They also provide services such as design, printing, imprinting and finishing.
Printed plastic cards are perfect for promotions and special events. They are ideal for gift certificates, restaurant or trade show coupons, hotel room keys and other types of loyalty programs. They are durable and can be printed in full color.
They are also popular for promoting business relationships. Unlike paper cards, they have an elegant and professional look and feel.
Aside from their impressive appearance, they are also durable and can be customized according to customer specifications. They can be engraved, imprinted, printed or printed with a magnetic stripe. They are also available in several thicknesses, including 30 mil and 20 mil.
The rise in demand for non-cash payment of goods & services, increase in adoption of e-payments, surge in government initiatives to promote digitization and growth of the banking sector is expected to drive the global market for plastic cards. These cards find wide application in the transportation, healthcare, financial services, and insurance industries.
Another important marketing factor that helps to promote the plastic cards market is their ability to provide a secure and reliable way of payment. In addition, these cards are environmentally friendly and help in minimizing the waste generated during the manufacturing process.
As a result, the demand for plastic cards is increasing in Asia Pacific. This region accounts for the largest share in the global market. This is attributed to the upsurge in number of banks and financial institutions. The Asia Pacific market is projected to grow at a healthy CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period.
