By James Kelly on January 5th, 2020 in SCS News
One of the biggest collections of products available here at the Smartcard Store is plastic cards. “That’s a niche product”, we hear you say. But that’s not really the case. When you count how many plastic cards we all use in our daily lives, you realise just how important they are.
Our range of plastic cards varies from basic plastic cards for printing to access control cards with a range of high tech functions, but what are the most common uses for them?
Once your debit or credit card has been printed with your bank’s branding and finished with your personal details, it is easy to forget that it once started as a basic plastic contactless card, the same as the ones we sell here at the Smartcard Store.
Credit, debit and any other kind of payment cards are known as smart cards which means they have a chip inside that can store data, as well as identify and authorise actions, such as payments and the majority of these types of cards start life as a plain white card with a signature strip, before being printed on and sent to you with your card number and name embossed.
Your Tesco Clubcard, your Nectar card, every other plastic loyalty card or store card in your wallet, they all started life as plain plastic cards.
Most loyalty cards are just basic plastic cards with a barcode printed on. The barcode will have a unique number that can be registered by a barcode scanner, therefore accessing your account and adding points, benefits etc, although some shops, like Tesco, have moved across to contactless loyalty cards.
Using plastic for loyalty cards as opposed to paper or card means they last better when being kept in purses or wallets and can also have more detailed printing on them, feeling and looking higher quality and more premium.
Whether you’re in college, university or full-time employment, most educational establishments and workplaces have an ID system in place, if not an access control system too.
ID cards are mostly plastic cards that start life as either a plain white or coloured card and are printed with photos, names and company/establishment branding.
ID cards that have no other function are generally just solid plastic cards, however plastic cards that are also used as access control are either proximity cards or contactless cards, allowing them to have those electronic functions.
For those of us who have pre-paid gas and electricity meters, that are operated using a card or a key, those cards are another example of how plastic cards are used in our everyday lives.
These cards are considered smart cards as they have a chip inside that remembers how much money has been paid onto the card and can then keep track of how much money has been spent and how much is left.
These plastic cards are also usually printed on to either be branded or to say the amount the card is worth.
We don’t think in our day to day lives about how often we use a plastic card for one reason or another but a lot of our everyday tasks wouldn’t happen without the help of plastic cards.
If you’re a business who is looking to purchase plastic cards for one of the above reasons – or any other use for that matter – you’ll find more information in our hub.
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