by Jennifer Kohlhepp, Managing Editor, ICMA

Despite digitalization taking hold across the world, physical cards continue to play a key role in our daily lives and will for many years to come. Thus, the International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA), selected Be Card Smart as the 2023 ICMA Card Manufacturing & Personalization EXPO theme. This in-person event is scheduled for May 15-18 in Orlando, Florida.

“The EXPO isn’t just the world’s only card-focused event, it’s the global card industry’s place to unite and strategize successful outcomes for all of our card industry initiatives and endeavors,” said Jeffrey Barnhart, ICMA founder and executive director. “The event offers a great deal of networking opportunities and a comprehensive agenda, with topics centered around the theme.”

Following are ICMA EXPO presenters and topics:

Cyril Lalo, CEO and Founder, Ellipse, will present How Can Smartcard Innovations Build Trust in and Boost a Digital Economy? The last few years have seen shifts in e-commerce and other payment innovations. With these innovations comes risks such as financial crime, fraud and false declines. Find out how the functionality and form factor of next-generation credit cards, which are more dynamic than ever, can deliver—in security, incentivizing digital payments and more. Trust is everything in the new digital economy—how can smartcards garner it while boosting the digital economy itself?

In this presentation, the audience will learn:

• Key payment card statistics gleaned from tracking average spend, user experience, top-wallet drivers’ and cardholders’ willingness to pay for payment card security.
• How to garner clients’ (including financial institutions’) trust in the digital economy.
• How to instill/generate strong anticipation from cardholders.
• About new revenue models for the payment industry.
• About new revenue models for payment cards.
• How to leverage existing processes and equipment to produce a more desirable payment card that meets new standards.

Attendees will come away with a better understanding of:

• The prevalence of card-not-present fraud after the migration to EMV and the recent increase following the pandemic, including the impact on stakeholders.
• New card technologies and stakeholder implementation considerations.
• How CNP fraud and false declines impact the behavior of financial institutions.
• How payment security affects card manufacturers’ client relationships, retention and business model at large.

Thomas Decker, VP Product Marketing Finance, Linxens will present The State of Play. The payment card of today has gone through a long evolution over the past 60 years. It started as a simple plastic card. Then embossing was added, followed by a magnetic-stripe and then an integrated contact chip. It evolved into a dual-interface card. Today more than 85% of all payment cards are dual-interface cards made from virgin PVC. However, the journey has not ended. Future payment cards will be much more diverse than they are today.

The number of issued payment cards is growing and banks are looking for differentiation. To stay top of the wallet with their customers, issuers are adding visual as well as functional features to their cards.

This presentation will highlight these future trends. It will cover security features like biometrics and dCVx, alternative materials for card bodies, as well as features like light and displays. It will cover the current technology as well as deployment status.

Chris Burket, Senior Marketing Engineer, TDK, will present Making Smart Metal Cards Truly Smart. Burket will present an innovative method to provide the user tactile feedback when a transaction has occurred. This feature would be a benefit to those with diminished sight and/or in situations where ambient light conditions are a detriment to “seeing” that a transaction did occur.

With the embedding of an ultra-thin piezo device that is attached to the metal layer, Burket will demonstrate that haptic devices can be implemented without the increase of overall smart card thickness and would require only a few additional electrical components once this function becomes more standardized and is integrated into the smart chips. Additionally, the energy needed to perform this function would be provided by the NFC magnetic field. The possible addition of audio feedback with the same piezo element to further assist in the transaction acknowledgement will also be discussed.

Traci Skala, Director of Payment Technology and Product Management, Giesecke+Devrient, will present More Inclusive Payments for All: How to Provide an Advanced Payment Card Experience that Can Better Serve Our Aging Population. As the population ages, new demands and experiences occur where payment cards can actively be involved in shaping a customer’s payment journey. The growing number of older people also opens up new customer expectations and business models for banks that have been serving them for years. The new opportunities and challenges appear at the same time. How can the payment card providers offer payment cards that can better fit this customer segment? What is the consideration when we design a payment card to reduce barriers in accessibility, usability and explanation? In this session, we will talk about some of the card designs existing in the market that can serve these unique purposes and how we can integrate inclusivity and accessibility in our design thinking for payment cards.

Christian Reuther, Managing Director, Plasticard-ZFT GmbH & Co. KG, will present Energy Efficiency in Card Production.

Dan Oswald, CEO, Arroweye Solutions, will present The Economics of Declining Card Volume. While there are many predictions and opinions on what the future holds for cards, one thing is for sure—major change is on the horizon, and it will bring many challenges and opportunities alike to your doorstep that require different thinking and approaches to everything card. This session will focus on why and how the digital card manufacturing model is the primary formula to enable organizations to efficiently adapt to the realities of what is to come.

During the Biometrics Panel Discussion, moderator Dori (Skelding) Rombola, Senior Sales Manager Payment, CSS Division, Infineon Technologies will discuss biometrics in payments with panelists from Infineon, IDEX Biometrics Ltd., Zwipe and IDEMIA.

The panel will discuss:

• Biometric Payment Card (BPC) enrolment.
• Other use cases of biometrics in verification/authentication.
• The key selling points of biometric solutions to different stakeholders.
• Key learnings from other regions of how to go to market for emerging markets.

Matteo Panetta, Area Sales Manager, SPICA, will present Going Green. Today, everybody is talking about going green but there’s still a long way to go. “Greenwashing” (switching off the lights, not flushing toilets) is not enough. In this situation, there are no half measures. Going green is a matter of change in terms of production, use of resources and product portfolio.

This presentation will provide:

• A short introduction about SPICA’s ESG approach and its recent investments into becoming more sustainable, both on the production side and in terms of catalogue.
• A description of the circular economy approach.
• A look toward the next steps.

Munish Chanana, Head of R&D and Board of Directors Member, Swiss Wood Solutions and Christian Lehringer, CPO and Head of Sales & Marketing, Swiss Wood Solutions will present Plastic-Free Wood Cards: Enabling Sustainability to the Payment Card Industry. Currently there are various types of “eco-friendly cards” available on the market as an alternative to the common PVC, PC or PET cards made of virgin petroleum-based plastics. In this presentation, Chanana and Lehringer present the first “plastic-free” payment wood card, which has been recently launched as a pilot in Germany and Switzerland. Also, highly durable non-payment cards (e.g., employee badges, business cards) will be presented. They will give insights into the properties and performance of the wood cards and discuss the concepts of circular economy, composting and recycling (including up and downcycling) of such real wood cards.

Jorge Lara Villalobos, Strategic Marketing Banking, S-P-S In Groupe, will present Top of the Wallet: The New Journey of Payments Cards. In today’s society, payment is changing at a very fast pace and is more and more driven by mobile and the Internet of Things. However, we can still observe that card issuers and the whole payment market are very driven by banking cards, and even more so by contactless cards.

Bank cards are still one of the preferred tools used by issuers to spread their brand image and are used by most of the population when making a payment. Regarded as the easiest way to enter into a cashless world, banking cards are also the easiest marketing tool on the hands of issuers to generate a “top-of-wallet” behavior on the consumer side.

So, during this session, we will try to show how to generate this top-of-wallet behavior thanks to design and construction of payment cards. We will also try to demonstrate that customization, social recognition and innovation are the three key ingredients allowing to create something special for and with consumers.

Rob Dixon, Vice President of Digital and Business Development, CPI Card Group, will present The Future of Instant Issuance. Consumers are busier than ever and demand immediate and easy solutions when it comes to how they pay. One way to compete for top-of-wallet status is by providing immediate access to the card with instant issuance. Financial institutions can lose revenue while their customers are waiting for a new card to be mailed to them. Instant issuance steps in and creates an immediate solution for issuers and customers that can build and deepen customer loyalty. And when in-branch instant issuance is complemented by push provisioning to a digital wallet, you have a strategy that will set you up well for the future. Dixon can discuss why financial institutions must keep pace with rapid consumer expectations for instant payment solutions.

Dave Tushie, Magellan Consulting, Inc., ICMA Standards and Technical Representative, will present Big Changes in Card Durability Standards. It has been more than 10 years since the first edition Card Service Life Standard (ISO 24789-1, 2) was published. A new revision of this card durability standard is currently being balloted and will be a significant change when it is published later this year or early 2024. This new revision provides a more deterministic test suite than the current version, addressing variations in interpretation and application. This presentation will review the most notable changes between the two versions and identify how to transition from the older (current published) version to the new.

The EXPO provides attendees with global perspectives on card industry trends, technological advances, business growth opportunities and methods to improve manufacturing and personalization. The event also offers numerous opportunities, including a golf outing and the Elan Awards of Excellence dinner, for attendees to network with industry thought leaders, colleagues and current and prospective clients.

Take full advantage of attending the EXPO by exhibiting or sponsoring at the event. Reserve an exhibitor booth or sponsorship package by contacting Nicole Lauzon at nlauzon@icma.com.

For more information about the EXPO and to register for the event, visit ICMAEXPO.com.