The payment module is specifically designed for cards made from recycled ocean plastic or wood to mass manufacture cost-efficiently
Contactless payment innovations in a way contribute to more sustainable use of resources. To further this movement, the payment industry has moved towards the use of more environmentally friendly materials for smart card manufacturing by offering a complete, single-source solution in the form of the SECORA Pay with Coil-on-Module (CoM) that is easily adaptable to different projects and market requirements.
The payment module comes with a newly developed copper wire antenna, specifically designed for cards made from recycled ocean plastic or wood, thus allowing cost-efficient card manufacturing for mass deployment.
“Communication between the chip module and card antenna is based on a radio frequency (RF) link; no electrical connection is required. By using CoM, our chip solutions can be easily integrated into contactless cards made of different materials. Manufacturers can flexibly and cost-effectively change their card designs and offer consumers sustainable, long-lasting products,” said Bjoern Scharfen, who heads the product line Payment & Ticketing Solutions at Infineon.
Additional features
Materials such as wood, Polylactid (PLA) or recycled plastic are more challenging to work with compared to PVC, especially when it comes to the card manufacturing processes such as lamination and printing. However, the SECORA Pay solutions use inductive coupling to connect the chip module with the card antenna, which results in many advantages for card manufacturers and users.
The payment chip modules have a thickness of only 0.32 mm and are thus up to 50 per cent thinner and up to 70 per cent lighter. Consequently, the CoM module provides higher flexibility concerning card construction while the new antenna design based on state-of-art copper wire enables simple embedding into all known inlay sheet materials including recycled ocean-bound plastic. Moreover, there is also no need for additional adhesive elements during the card lamination process.
Finally, CoM technology makes cards more robust and helps to meet the increasing demand for contactless solutions. With CoM, contactless cards can be produced on standard equipment for contact-based cards without making new investments in specific machinery.
Market expectations
Market research firm ABI Research expects dual interface card shipments to reach 2.2 billion pieces in 2020 (Payment and Banking Card Secure IC Technologies, August 2019). To protect natural resources and to increase environmental sustainability, leading industry players are therefore launching more eco-friendly programs like the Greener Payments Partnership (GPP) program by MasterCard.
CPI Card Group Inc., a payment technology company and provider of credit, debit and prepaid solutions, has started deploying the SECORA Pay solution for its new range of eco-friendly plastic cards.
“Using the Infineon SECORA Pay solution enabled CPI to bring Second Wave, our payment card that features a core made of recovered ocean-bound plastic to market quickly. The combination of inductive coupling antennas and chips made scaling this sustainable eco-focused payment card an efficient process”, said Guy DiMaggio from CPI.
SECORA PAY is now available from Infineon Technologies AG.
