Entrust Datacard Achieves Instant Issuance Milestone – Over 10 Million EMV Chip Cards Instantly Issued within the U.S. in One Year

In-branch issuance of EMV cards is on the rise as the U.S. market continues to migrate to EMV chip card compliance.

MINNEAPOLIS—(May 4, 2016)—Entrust Datacard today announced that many of its U.S. instant issuance customers are migrating over to an EMV instant issuance program. As a result, over 10.6 million chip cards have been issued in the U.S. in the past 12 months utilizing Entrust Datacard instant issuance solutions. And, that number is projected to rise as more banks deploy instant issuance as part of their overall branch transformation and EMV compliance roll out.

Financial institutions are seeing a variety of benefits by enabling and optimizing their instant issuance card programs with EMV capabilities – from higher activation rates and card portfolio profitability; to increases in convenience, service levels and overall customer satisfaction; to helping educate consumers at the branch level on how to use EMV cards.

"Today, instant issuance technology allows banks to make their in-branch experiences more meaningful and efficient," said Ray Wizbowski, vice president financial vertical at Entrust Datacard. "Instant issuance provides a perfect opportunity for bank staff to educate customers about the benefits of their new chip card and instruct them on how to use the card. This instruction has a direct impact on the efficiency of branch operations moving low value transactions from the teller to the ATM as a result of the education provided with an instantly issued card."

Fraud is also a driving factor for increased instant EMV card issuance as more and more consumers need an emergency card replacement if their card information has been compromised. Giving consumers the ability to walk into a branch location to immediately receive an EMV card has helped turn a consumer experience from negative to positive. In addition, if a larger number of consumers are affected by fraudulent activity, the instant issuance of EMV cards can alleviate central issuance operations when reissues are needed. By leveraging instant issuance solutions, the financial institutions can also greatly reduce the amount of rush and overnight delivery costs that are associated with having to mail re-issued emergency card replacements.

"Instant Issuance also has a significant impact on overall customer satisfaction and card portfolio profitability," added Wizbowski. "A recent Javelin study indicated that cardholders are 22% more likely to be very-to-extremely satisfied with their bank if they received an instantly issued card. Additionally, financial institutions have indicated that activation rates of instantly issued cards is 100%, as opposed to the industry standard of approximately 60% activation rate of centrally issued cards. Instant issuance is clearly a win – not only for the customer, but for the bank as well."

Entrust Datacard has a long history of successful implementations supporting hundreds of EMV deployments and more than 30,000 instant issuance programs worldwide. With international and domestic experience, Entrust Datacard is well-positioned to help U.S. financial institutions make the shift to EMV instant issuance; additionally the company's entire installed customer-base has the ability to upgrade to EMV chip cards in an affordable and streamlined way.

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