More than one year in development, Perfect Plastic's contactless card breakthrough enables card issuers to now provide contactless payment cards with the same high aesthetic appeal of foil as their traditional cards, and opens the door for contactless technology to a significant portion of the overall market. This card product is based upon MicroPass® 4003 and an innovative antenna design from INSIDE Contactless.

Foil cards have attractive metalized foil applied across the entire face of the card, offering a mirror-like reflection unattainable with printing ink alone, and have carved out a significant portion of the premium-level card market because of their high aesthetic appeal. But getting contactless technology to work with these foil cards has been a huge technical challenge because the metal foil layer ordinarily blocks the radio signals contactless cards rely on to perform transactions.

"The challenge in developing this revolutionary product was to find the right balance between having enough metal content in the foil layer to provide the desired appearance but not so much that it interferes with the radio signals," said Matt Smoczynski, vice president of marketing for Perfect Plastic Printing. "We worked closely with INSIDE Contactless to create this breakthrough, designing a solution and developing the technologies required to produce a contactless foil card that meets the required industry certifications while maintaining the card's striking visual effect."

Perfect Plastic's contactless foil cards are manufactured using a specially designed inlay based upon the MicroPass® 4003 contactless payment platform from INSIDE Contactless. The inlays employ a new antenna design specifically tuned to this foil card. MicroPass 4003 provides support for Visa payWave, including Visa MSD 1.4.2 and Visa 2.0.2 Streamline Online qVSDC standards for global interoperability.

"Today's announcement represents a milestone in the maturity of the contactless payment card market by providing entrée for this technology into an important market segment, and is the latest result of our longstanding partnership with Perfect Plastic," said Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless. "With low power consumption and fast transaction speed, MicroPass is the ideal platform for challenging applications such as full-foil contactless payment cards."

The full-face foil contactless payment card announced today is just the latest in a long line of Perfect Plastic's innovations. Always at the forefront of card technology, Perfect Plastic created the first fully functional clear secure card and the first full-face hologram card, and pioneered the use of digital printing and bar code technology in the plastic card manufacturing process. The company has vast experience in full-face foil holographic cards, color-shift graphics, fabric-embedded cards, layered cards and other creative options that enable issuers to better promote their brands through distinctive products for their cardholders.