In order to offer a highly aesthetical card to its female customers, the Caisse d'Epargne gave complete freedom to a well-known French designer to create the visuals. The refined and highly coloured creative spirit of this artist is revealed through these designs. Smart Vibrant technology, developed by Oberthur Technologies and certified by GIE CB, was used to further enhance the esthetical qualities of the card.

The collaboration resulted in an exciting innovation: a coloured core payment card which is easily recognised in a cardholder's wallet and therefore used more systematically.

The banking card is a crucial marketing tool and a personal link to the cardholder. Smart Vibrant technology by Oberthur Technologies provides a leading edge to card design. It replaces the standard white plastic used in card production with an almost limitless range of plastic colours to suit specific brand images. Bank customers can instantly identify the card in their wallet just by looking at its coloured edge.

"Following the success of personalised cards, the Caisse d'Epargne and a famous French Haute-Couture designer joined forces to create a new card collection. This jewel distinguishes itself by its innovative aesthetical qualities such as the unusually bright coloured-core as well as its red or silver magnetic stripe. With a tribute to women on the launch of the visual during International Women's Day on the 8th of March, the cards were fine-tuned in collaboration with Oberthur Technologies to create a real fashion accessory," said Dominique Bleichner, Director of "Banque au Quotidien" at the Caisse d'Epargne.

"Oberthur Technologies is proud of this advanced and innovative technology, which gives a luxurious appearance to payment cards. Oberthur Technologies is recognised not only for its security expertise, but also for developing and offering new designs to its customers in order to differentiate their offer. It is a great achievement for our industry to offer innovative products that are critical for our customers' marketing campaigns and that are perfectly in line with the payment market specifications and technical requirements," added Eric Duforest, Managing Director of Europe, Card Systems Division at Oberthur Technologies.