Datacard Group continues to see the tremendous market trajectory for instant issuance as financial organizations implement it into their overall business strategies.
MINNETONKA, MN (June 25, 2014) -- Datacard Group today announced that, in the U.S. alone, financial institutions have instantly issued over 15 million cards this past year with Datacard® instant issuance solutions. And, that number is projected to grow as more financial organizations adopt the technology and recognize the benefits it brings to them and their cardholders.
“We’ve seen that the U.S. has really been at the forefront for adopting instant issuance, and the global markets are quickly following suit,” said Phil Kasper, regional vice president, Americas, for Datacard Group. “But there is still a huge opportunity. Just in the U.S. alone, only about 16 percent of total US branches have instant issuance today; however that number is projected to grow to 50 percent within four years. That shows how financial organizations are placing tremendous value in what it brings to cardholders – including a positive customer experience, as well as the increased importance for helping offset reissues and emergency card replacements.”
With over 11,000 branches that have already implemented the Datacard instant issuance software and/or associated hardware in just the U.S. (Datacard Group has roughly 20,000 branch installations worldwide), this an optimal time for financial organizations to offer this capability to their customer-base. By offering instant issuance, consumers can receive a personalized, ready-to-use permanent card at the opening of an account, instead of having to wait days or weeks to receive their cards in the mail. This provides instant purchasing power with immediately activated cards. And, for customers who have misplaced their cards or fallen victim to theft, instant issuance also provides an immediate solution without having to wait for a replacement card.
Datacard Group offers flexibility and options for instant issuance – including the software and hardware installed directly at the branch level; or through a cloud-based service model. Both models easily complement the centralized card production capabilities by giving financial institutions the flexibility to do various issuance and personalization options that can grow with them and evolve as the market demands change. In addition, the Datacard instant issuance solution is already integrated with more than 45 card management systems and network activation switches, so the overall solution requires a low level of upfront integration into the card management systems.
“Datacard Group’s unique position in the market has always been to help our customers design any card issuance program that fits their needs -- whether it is central issuance, back office or instant issuance, magnetic stripe or chip personalization; and we do it by never compromising security or integrity of payment cards or data,” added Kasper. “In addition, our entire installed customer-base has the ability to upgrade to EMV smart cards in a streamlined and affordable way. We focus on helping our customers meet the demands of the industry and be a true partner to them when navigating through the complexity of the market.”
In addition to offering multiple instant issuance options for financial organizations, Datacard Group has also added an entirely new type of security layer to its offering with the recently announced acquisition of Entrust – a company that offers software authentication platforms that strengthen security in a wide range of identity and transaction ecosystems. By creating this hybrid offering, Datacard Group and Entrust are able to offer a bundled package of both the physical issuance and personalization technology of card programs, the logical and digital security features for cardholder data and transaction-based applications, and solutions that will easily help migration paths for new offerings such as mobile payments and mobile wallets.
For more information about Datacard instant issuance solutions, please visit http://www.datacard.com/financial/instant-issuance.
About Datacard Group
Datacard Group offers technologies for securing identities and safeguarding transactions in physical and digital environments. The company’s innovative portfolio now includes Entrust® authentication software platforms, bringing important new capabilities to tens of thousands of government agencies, financial institutions and other enterprises in more than 150 countries. Together, Datacard Group and Entrust issue more than 10 million secure identities every day, manage billions of secure transactions annually and issue a majority of the world’s financial cards. For more information, visit www.datacard.com or www.entrust.com. Follow us on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.