For the past few years card issuers have been more willing to experiment with the look of the traditional payment card. Clear, chip, mini, and even bean-shaped cards have been brought to market as companies used design elements to differentiate their products.
But one constant, whose function has become almost obsolete, has been those raised numbers and letters. As it turns out, they may not be forever either.
Visa International and MasterCard International gave issuers the go-ahead to stop embossing cards - provided they meet electronic authorization requirements - in the spring.
Participation is voluntary, but sources say going flat could save issuers money and open up more design possibilities. Because the cards must be authorized electronically, banks could also try issuing the cards to riskier consumer segments, the companies say.
Over the past several years the replacement by the majority of merchants of manual card swipers (a.k.a. knuckle-busters and zip-zappers) with electronic point of sale terminals has made raised numbers merely cosmetic. But embossing may be a feature that cardholders - and therefore issuers - have grown attached to.
So far only one MasterCard and eight Visa banks - none in the United States - are issuing flat cards. American Express Co. and Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services are not.
MasterCard said Bank Rakyat of Indonesia began issuing unembossed debit cards last month. Eventually the bank plans to issue them to its 25 million checking account customers, according to MasterCard.
The Purchase, N.Y., company said it developed protocols for issuing unembossed cards in response to bank queries about lowering fraud risk. John Donovan, MasterCard's vice president of global development, said that since unembossed cards require electronic authorization, they can be issued to consumers who tend not to meet issuers' credit standards.
Mr. Donovan said flat cards could save issuers a small amount on production, "but that's not the reason they're doing this."
Visa International, of Foster City, Calif., said the eight member banks that are issuing flat cards are in India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Turkey. Gaylon Howe, the executive vice president in the company's consumer products platform group, said he expects about 40 issuers in 20 countries - but not the United States - to issue flat cards in the next 12 months.
Visa said unembossed cards can be issued only in countries where at least 95% of point of sale volume comes through electronic terminals. It has also stipulated that a separate bank identification number be used for unembossed cards so that issuers can monitor them.
Visa announced the first unembossed cards in March, for the Asia/Pacific region. But it said the standard change applies to any Visa issuer and to any debit, credit, or prepaid product.
Mr. Howe said the change means that issuers of Electron, an unembossed debit product issued mostly outside of the United States, can now rebrand those cards with the Visa name.
Mr. Howe said flat cards will eliminate hand-operated machines that use carbon copies (and the mail) to process transactions, which cost a lot more and take much longer than electronic transactions. He said merchants and issuers would also cut costs related to fraud.
According to The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter in Oxnard, Calif., at least 95% of all Visa and MasterCard transactions worldwide are authorized electronically.
Marianne Berry, a managing associate at Auriemma Consulting Group Inc. in Westbury, N.Y., said that one of the original purposes of embossing was to prevent counterfeiting. But embossing is no longer a deterrent to making fraudulent cards, she said.
There may still be reasons for keeping the letters raised, however. Embossing carries a "perception of legitimacy," Ms. Berry said. American consumers, who are used to raised cards, could balk at the idea of smooth ones, she said.
Mr. Howe of Visa said issuers could opt to engrave flat cards for cosmetic or other reasons.
Derick Hudspith, a creative director at Point Design Inc. in New York, said that going flat is an "obvious step" because raised numbers are no longer necessary.
He added that card designers can do much more with a smooth surface. A design in the lower portion of the card always gets "distorted" once the numbers and letters are embossed, he said. Even the colors of the raised numbers were an issue, because they could not clash with the rest of the card, Mr. Hudspith said.
