Agenda

2026 EXPO Hotel: Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld® Room Block reservation cut-off date is March 27, 2025

Start the week where the energy is—at the Exhibition Grand Opening & Welcome Reception with Exhibitors, sponsored by Fiserv. Join us Sunday, April 19, 6–7 p.m. to be among the first on the show floor, connect with exhibitors and ease into the EXPO with a relaxed hour of conversation and discovery. Reunite with industry colleagues, meet new partners and kick off the week with momentum.

The International Card Manufacturers Association is proud to welcome Tom Koulopoulos as a keynote speaker at the ICMA EXPO—bringing bold perspective, deep experience and a hopeful roadmap for navigating technological change.

This year's keynote presentation is sponsored by FaceTec.

Tom Koulopoulos is chairman and founder of Delphi Group, a Boston-based think tank with more than 30 years of influence on how organizations adapt to change, and a founding partner of Acrovantage Ventures, which invests in early-stage technology startups. Over a career spanning four decades, Tom has served as executive director of the Babson College Center for Business Innovation, director of the Dell Innovation Lab and professor at Boston University.

Drawing from his latest book, Gigatrends, Tom will explore the most powerful technological forces reshaping how we live, work and do business in the 21st century. From Web 3.0 and the Metaverse to Digital Workers, Frictionless Commerce, Blockchain, global healthcare disruption, and Generation Alpha, Gigatrends connects the dots between complex, often fragmented trends—making them understandable, actionable and relevant.

With a uniquely behavioral lens, Tom goes beyond technology itself to examine how these forces will shape people, organizations and entire industries.

Like all of his keynotes, Gigatrends is tailored specifically to the ICMA audience, offering a practical roadmap for organizations seeking to thrive amid disruption. At a time when uncertainty feels ever-present, Tom delivers a message that is realistic, thought-provoking and ultimately optimistic—showing how leaders can turn rapid change into lasting opportunity.

The NEXUS Stage, sponsored by FaceTec, is a high-energy hub right on the ICMA EXPO show floor—built to spotlight what’s next in card technology. Throughout the event, attendees can drop in for live presentations, product spotlights and tech talks, creating a gathering point for discovering new ideas, solutions, and innovations.

It’s where innovation and thought leadership take the spotlight in real time—so you can see what’s new, what’s working and what’s coming next.

This interactive session explores the full lifecycle of cards—from their earliest origins to today’s sophisticated, secure, and personalized solutions. Participants will journey through key milestones in card development, examining how materials, technologies, standards, and use cases have evolved over time. 

Designed with audience participation at its core, the session will combine industry facts with practical context, unpacking not just what changed, but why certain approaches became standard. Attendees will be invited to engage in discussion, challenge assumptions, and explore alternative paths that could shape the next era of card design and production. 

The session will conclude by connecting historical lessons to current and emerging card innovation opportunities, offering fresh perspectives on how the past can inform smarter, more creative decisions for the future of the card industry. 

Leading crypto-native companies—MetaMask, Gemini and Coinbase—are embracing physicality as a bold extension of their digital identities. These brands are introducing premium metal cards that serve not only as functional financial tools but also as powerful symbols of their positioning, values and evolving communication strategies. By translating the ethos of Web3 into tangible form, these companies highlight a growing trend: even the most digital players recognize the enduring impact of physical cards in shaping brand perception, fostering trust and bridging the gap between virtual innovation and real-world experience. 

A process‑focused discussion on the mutual needs of manufacturers and personalization teams, including communication, data readiness, production alignment and quality expectations, with practical guidance to improve collaboration across the card production lifecycle. 

Gift card fraud remains a persistent and growing challenge. While gift card packaging has become increasingly complex and expensive, these measures continue to be defeated. 

This presentation explores an innovative technology developed by Digimarc that works with existing point-of-sale terminals. Graph-Tech is enabling this technology to be integrated into existing card personalization systems. Attendees will gain insight into how this approach helps defeat gift card fraud without disrupting production or retail operations. 

The NEXUS Stage, sponsored by FaceTec, is a high-energy hub right on the ICMA EXPO show floor—built to spotlight what’s next in card technology. Throughout the event, attendees can drop in for live presentations, product spotlights and tech talks, creating a gathering point for discovering new ideas, solutions, and innovations.

It’s where innovation and thought leadership take the spotlight in real time—so you can see what’s new, what’s working and what’s coming next.

AI is rapidly reshaping the global card ecosystem. This interactive roundtable will explore how AI is changing the full card lifecycle—from design and production quality to identity verification, fraud prevention and emerging AI-initiated (“agentic”) transactions. Participants will break into themed tables to discuss practical impacts. The session concludes with table report-outs and a full-room discussion to surface shared challenges and actionable priorities for the next 12–18 months. 

AI Roundtable: Participant Instructions (Quick Guide)

  1. Choose a table (Registration Area)
    Stop by the AI Roundtable table next to EXPO registration, grab the one-page overview and sign up for the topic that fits you best.

  2. Find your roundtable
    Roundtables are set up behind the main EXPO stage. Look for the topic tent card and take a seat.

  3. Join the discussion (15–20 minutes)
    Each table will pick a spokesperson to keep time and capture takeaways. Contribute practical insights on AI risks, opportunities and real use cases—what’s working, what’s not and what’s next.

  4. Listen + add during report-outs
    After discussions, each table shares top insights and next steps, followed by a full-room Q&A to compare themes across topics.

  5. Know your input will be used
    Report-outs are recorded to support a Card Manufacturing Magazine recap of key takeaways.

Over the past few years, Skyler Ferran, CISSP, CISA, QSA (P2PE), CPSA-L/P—Principal of Payments – Solution Validation at Coalfire—has conducted numerous audits against the PCI Card Production Physical and Logical Security Standards. In doing so, he’s uncovered a recurring theme: widespread confusion across the industry about how different PCI standards apply and the consequences of that misunderstanding. In his presentation, Skyler will break down these distinctions and offer critical insights into the current state of PCI Card Production compliance and what it means for your organization. 

The rapid shift toward flat payment cards is reshaping how issuers, bureaus, and technology providers approach card design, materials, and personalization. As programs move away from embossed formats, flat cards enable modern branding, streamlined production, and broader compatibility with an expanding range of substrates. 

At the same time, sustainability is reframing decisions across the ecosystem. Interest in recycled, biobased, and reduced plastic constructions is growing, driven by regulatory momentum, evolving consumer expectations, and broader ESG commitments, yet adoption varies widely by market due to cost structures, performance requirements, and consumer demand. 

Advances in personalization technologies, including Drop on Demand, high-definition print methods, and next-generation surface treatments, are evolving to support this broader mix of materials and design approaches. This session explores how issuers and bureaus are evaluating emerging substrates, balancing sustainability with production realities, and adapting personalization strategies to meet the needs of diverse regional programs. 

 

Please note that this schedule is still in development and subject to change

With the wide variation on card builds, materials, and options in today’s market, ensuring you hit your business’s gross margin targets is more difficult than ever. This very practical discussion will focus on how to implement a margin management system: the tools and data required, simple do-it-yourself analysis techniques, and building action plans for when operations strays from its goals. Oriented toward general management, operations management, and finance professionals.

The use of recycled or biobased card materials is increasing rapidly. Despite the undoubted advantages, bonding on these new materials, however, remains a challenge.  This presentation delves into innovative ways to bond on eco-friendly card materials sustainably. It highlights traditional fastening methods, innovative adhesive systems as well as thermoset bonding. At the same time this educational presentation explains and differentiates their eco-friendly advantages and challenges on the example of real-world applications (such as chip module implanting). On top of that the presenter will share pragmatic und useful recommendations for how to approach and overcome bonding challenges with regards to eco-friendly card materials.

A key method for adding value to your offering and successfully competing against low-cost/high-volume competitors lies in personalization and small order processing. However, the challenges of building a manufacturing process capable of individualized order processing are daunting. Initial implementations typically require extraordinary amounts of time/labor in order processing and non-scalable processes for manufacturing and shipping small quantities. We discuss general approaches to solving these problems, with a highlight on digital order automation and digital manufacturing job management.

Presenting the Élan Awards of Excellence

Tonight we will not only celebrate the winners of our prestigious Élan Awards of Excellence, but also the rich culture and geographic diversity of our ICMA attendees. Make your way through the global food and drink stations for a fun culinary experience! Enjoy the music and make some new ICMA friends and connections.

Card personalization and issuance requires technology, precision and efficiency to bring cards to life. In parallel with the underpinnings of Industry 4.0, digital machine intelligence within this segment brings increased efficiency and ROI opportunities to the forefront of smart card manufacturing. The Entrust Production Analytics Solution is a software platform built on delivering this value proposition to card personalization operations through a customizable, real-time, aggregated architecture. This presentation will look more closely at how and why the trend for digital intelligence can leverage powerful real-time analytics to identify trends in productivity, bottlenecks, quality gaps and overall line-balancing. Production analytics continues to drive the next generation of smart manufacturing in card personalization and issuance, bringing enhanced value to operations and business alike.

 

Celebrating its 70th anniversary with a leading position as a plastic substrates supplier for the smartcard industry, SPICA discovered and launched a new technology unique in the industry, which will lead to a revolution in the way the PVC sheets for the card market will be designed and produced. There will be unlimited possibilities; the only limit will be the imagination of SPICA and its partners.

Training is an integral part of hiring and retention in the card manufacturing industry, especially for companies that are hiring outside of the industry. David Tushie, standards and technical representative of the International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA), shares insights on the state of the card manufacturing industry and how the Advanced Card Education (ACE) program can be the answer to helping industry leaders better hire and retain employees.