Contactless
Contactless cards belong to the group of smart cards, which have an embedded ‘invisible’ chip and antenna within their body and do not require physical contact with the reader. Instead, communication and data exchange between the card and the contactless reader occur via a radio signal, known as RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification). Depending on your needs for transmission speed, range, data volume, and security requirements, you can choose different contactless card technologies based on the chip and contactless antenna used.
For example, Mifare is a widely used technology for contactless cards that are typically used for various applications such as access control, public transportation, internal payment systems (closed-loop), and more. Mifare allows both writing and reading data to/from the contactless chip, while some other technologies like RFID EM or UHF only allow data reading. If you need a longer range, your choice should be a UHF chip.
Chip
When talking about smart cards, it usually refers to chip cards that have a memory chip and/or microprocessor embedded in them. These cards can securely store data and perform various data processing functions, such as authentication, data encryption, dynamic password generation, electronic signatures, and more.
Smart cards or chip cards have found broad applications as SIM cards for mobile operators and in the banking sector as bank payment cards specified according to EMV (Europay-Mastercard-Visa) standards. Chip cards are also used for closed-loop payment schemes, which are only valid at specific merchants or organizations or within a particular country (national schemes), and they do not necessarily have to comply with EMV standards.
Chip cards are widely used as identification and authentication cards for logging into computers, network resources (VPN), business applications and services, online banking, and other public services. In Croatia, an excellent example of the use of a smart card is the new eID – electronic identity card.
Virtual
There is a growing number of banks, card companies, fintech companies (financial services companies) that issue virtual cards to their clients for card payments. Virtual cards are used within special applications like Revolut or various loyalty apps, or within digital wallets like Google Pay or Apple Pay.
This trend has also extended to loyalty programs, which increasingly rely on virtual loyalty cards as part of a separate mobile loyalty app or collective apps that store various loyalty cards. The mobile app serves for client authentication and offers other useful features such as transaction history, currently available promotions, coupons, virtual catalogs, and profile management, all aimed at enhancing the user experience.
If you need the development of such a specialized mobile loyalty app or the creation of specifications (EMV profiles) for a virtual card, feel free to contact us.
Magnetic
Although they are often considered “older” technology, magnetic stripe cards, or mag-stripe cards, still occupy a significant portion of the card market due to their simplicity of production and low cost. The reasons they are still actively used vary, but it’s worth noting that installing new systems for reading data from magnetic stripe cards often requires significant investments and upgrades. If there is already a system in place that works with magnetic stripe cards, it is more cost-effective to continue using the same technology that has proven reliable over the years of use, unless security standards require the use of a chip. Magnetic stripe cards are popular in loyalty and identification solutions, access control, as membership cards, and more.
In accordance with ISO/IEC 7816, the following magnetic stripe technologies are supported, based on the strength of the magnetic field:
- Low Coercivity (LoCo)
- High Coercivity (HiCo)
QR Code
QR code cards provide practical, simple, and cost-effective solutions for many applications, such as retail cards, gift cards, loyalty cards, travel tickets, business cards, package tracking, and more. They are widely used and very easy to use, as well as being economically accessible.
Since QR codes cannot be deciphered by the human eye, they are very popular for personalization purposes. QR codes are used in mobile applications for identifying loyalty cards, serving as URLs for accessing various web addresses by simply scanning the code, in retail marketing campaigns, discount coupons, event tickets (cultural, sports), business cards, and more.
- Numerical data: up to approximately 7,000 characters.
- Alphanumeric data: up to approximately 4,000 characters.
- Binary (8-bit) data: up to approximately 2,953 bytes.
- Kanji characters (Sinogram data): up to approximately 1,817 characters.
Bar Code
Barcode, often referred to as a bar code, barcode, or simply a code (depending on how it’s written), on cards provide practical, simple, and cost-effective solutions for various applications such as retail cards, gift cards, loyalty cards, travel tickets, package tracking, and more. They are widely used and easy to use, and they are also cost-effective.
A bar code is a method of marking with a series of dark and light lines that is easily readable by machines, making it useful for identification purposes. One common use is marking products for inventory purposes, whether it’s when they enter a warehouse or leave a store. Since these codes cannot be deciphered by the human eye and require barcode readers for scanning, barcodes are popular for personalization purposes as well. Bar code cards have similar applications to QR code cards.
There are various types of barcodes available, but these three standards are the most commonly used:
- EAN-13 Bar Code
- EAN-8 Bar Code
- EAN/UCC-128 Bar Code
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