Articles related to Payment Solutions

Get to know Cardportal: our self-service portal.

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We offer our customers a self-service portal, "CardPortal", and today we want to tell you a little about this tool.

If you are already our customer and user, then we thank you for your trust and for joining this channel of communication with Contisystems.

If you're already a customer of ours for payment solutions and you're not yet a user, then surrender, you'll see that it's worth it.

If you're not our client or don't know what we're talking about yet, then this article is for you.

What is Cardportal?

Cardportal is a reserved area, accessible with a username and password provided by Contisystems, where key users from each client company can autonomously access up-to-date information on Payment Solutions services.

Why was it created?

This portal was created following suggestions from our customers that were received in the satisfaction survey, but also in order to make our processes ever more agile and our service more efficient.

What features are available?

There are currently 3 areas available on this portal:

  1. Stock - consult the available stock of cards for each of the contracted references
  2. Production - consultation of completed customizations with information on shipping dates and formats
  3. Merece - consultation of the number of kilos collected and the status of each batch collected(only available to Merece members)
  4. User management - password recovery options, adding and removing users (only available for admin users)

What does it promise us for the future?

Our aim is to concentrate future features on this portal that will prove relevant in the quest for a better and more efficient service. Likewise, we are receptive to input from users in order to make it ever more complete and user-friendly.

We want to do our best for you!

Join us at the launch event of our new movement Merece

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Electronic cards occupy a special place in our wallets. But what happens to them when they expire or become unusable for some other reason?

At Contisystems, as a supplier and personalizer of cards, we feel the need to do more to minimize the environmental impact of our activity. Every year we supply millions of cards and we know that each card leaves a footprint equivalent to 150 grams of carbon. Since each card is valid for 3 or 4 years, there is a high turnover and many unused cards. And we already know where unused cards usually end up... in the garbage can! In other words, in addition to the carbon footprint they leave behind, this waste will also contribute to filling up landfills.

It was in this context that we decided to create a movement to give unused cards the ending they deserve, an ecologically responsible one.

Our aim is to involve as many organizations as possible in encouraging companies and individuals to contribute to the environmentally responsible treatment of card waste with electronic components (whether banking or not). Therefore:

  • if you work for a company that issues cards, don't miss out and encourage your company to join the movement;
  • if you know someone who works for a card issuing company, share this article and encourage them to participate;
  • If you also want to contribute on a personal level, be sure to follow the movement to find out what to do and pressure your card issuers to get involved;
  • if you work in another sector that generates untreated waste, get inspired and create your own waste treatment cycle; we are available to share experiences and contribute in any way we can to initiatives in other sectors.

We all have a role to play in creating a more ecologically responsible world, will you play yours?

Join us and follow the online broadcast of the launch event of this new movement on October 8th between 09:30 and 11:30.

We will be counting on the participation of the first members of the movement and on our partners who will enable us to give the cards the ending they deserve.

We're counting on you, our planet deserves it.

Sign up now!

What happens to cards swallowed by the ATM?

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We all know the result of consecutively inserting the wrong pin, or what happens when we try to use a card that has already expired... But do you know what happens to your card after it is swallowed by the automatic machine? Find out about the mysterious journey of swallowed bank cards.

Every day hundreds of bank cards are retained at ATMs. The card retention system was created to guarantee customer security and prevent fraud and requires cards to follow a highly secure route to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands and compromising access to your money.

But let's find out what journey the cards make from your retention to their destruction.

1. The card is blacklisted

To ensure that your card details are not used after they have been retained and that your account is secure, your card details are placed on a "blacklist". This list protects bank customers from misuse of their card details (e.g. for online purchases).

2. Collecting the captured cards

Cards from different banks can be retained in each ATM. The bank that owns the ATM regularly collects these cards and separates them by entity.

Every week, the various banks schedule the exchange of retained cards so that the cards are returned to the banks to which they belong.

This process, although seemingly simple, is quite complex. We're talking about thousands of cards a week, and from many different banks.

The process of separating the cards by banking entity alone is a headache for the banks because of the security and rigor required and the logistics of the whole process.

This whole cycle means that it often takes well over a week for a withheld card to reach the issuing bank.

3. Checking the cards collected

After receiving the cards, each bank checks their cards, one by one, to ensure that everything is correct. In this process, the cards collected are compared with the list provided by the other banks that have collected the cards from their ATMs.

4. Destruction of cards

Finally, cards that are not returned to customers are destroyed! The cards are usually shredded by industrial machines and the waste is handed over to an entity that will process it.

Card capture on the ATM network results in a significant administrative and operational burden for banks, as well as costs. Banks often have too many resources dedicated to this process and it doesn't flow smoothly, resulting in delays in identifying captured cards and prolonging the time they are blacklisted.

This is why Contisystems developed the captured card processing service, which centralizes the collection of cards, their reading and reporting, streamlining the logistics of exchanging them with other banks, storing them in vaults and destroying them in an ecologically responsible manner when their end of life is confirmed. We believe that, with this service, we speed up the process of handing over cards to the respective issuer and reduce the operational effort involved. Find out more about our service here: https://conti.systems/pt/solucoes-de-pagamento/recolha-e-reciclagem-de-cartoes/

Digitization of terms and conditions

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In April 2020, the Bank of Portugal (BdP) announced that bank customers filed 18,104 complaints in 2019. This is 18.7% more than in 2018. This increase, according to the BdP, was mainly due to the availability of the Electronic Complaints Book (LRE). Excluding this book from the analysis, there would have been a 1.4% increase in complaints in 2019 compared to 2018.

In this report, the BdP reveals that the topics most complained about by customers are: bank deposits, consumer credit and housing and mortgage loans.

What do all these themes have in common?

As a rule, they are all governed by terms and conditions that are made known and accepted by your bank to the customer, such as interest rates, service costs and other information.

As in any dispute or disagreement, when they exist, who is right? The customer? The bank?

It is therefore imperative for banks to be able to prove, in the event of a dispute, that the customer has been informed that a certain product or service has "x" costs, "x" APR, or any other data.

This was the motivation that led one of our client banks to challenge us to a new project which, although challenging in terms of its content, turned out to be the right opportunity for us to apply many of our skills, namely our knowledge, technical capacity and internal infrastructure.

The challenge itself is for the bank to guarantee that the cardmail (courtesy letter) that accompanies the credit card to be sent to the customer is produced and personalized as the bank has stipulated with data as varied as:

  • Name
  • Address
  • APRs and other rates
  • Associated terms and conditions (fixed or variable)

In short, we guarantee in this project that the cardmail will be personalized with the client's data, with the negotiated rates, and that it will be printed and stored in real time in a digital custody solution, in strict compliance with the law.

This allows the bank's callcenter teams to have visibility over the document that has been made in real time and sent to the customer and what information they have in writing.

Imagine the following scenario:

A customer calls his or her bank to say that he or she has not been informed of the credit card charge(s) that have been sent to him or her. At that moment, the bank employee will be able to access in real time the document that was produced and sent in paper format to his address but which, at Contisystems, has been stored in digital custody. In this way, the bank can see that the card and its corresponding cardmail carried all the information that the customer now claims not to have been aware of.

What's more, in the above scenario, the bank employee who attended to customer A could send a copy of the terms and conditions or cardmail that accompanied the card when it was sent by email.

What we are describing here is giving the bank the possibility of having digital proof of what was actually sent to the customer or what was written on it. This is only possible because Contisystems can take custody in real time of the document that is leaving the personalization machine and going to the end customer.

Talk to us if this solution sounds interesting for your organization.

Already familiar with our card design service?

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In the Payment Solutions division we have worked to broaden our area of operation and today we can say with conviction that we are much more than a card personalizer. The latest extension of our service is further proof of this.

If we already cover the entire chain of complementary activities after card production, such as producing cardmail, sending it directly to customers, processing captured cards or even recycling expired cards, now we want to be present even before the card is conceptually realized in order to ensure the entire process.

In order to contribute to the preparatory phase of designing the card, we recently signed a partnership agreement with a communications agency with experience in designing bank cards. By combining this partner's design experience with our know-how regarding the possibilities that exist in terms of materials, effects and types of personalization, we can offer our clients a truly distinctive design service, making the most of all the options available.

Now we can be sure of delivering work with great added value, even at the beginning of the cardboard design process.

Find out what we can do to help you focus more on your business.

Talk to us

Card personalization possibilities

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Stick to your strategy.

Explore all the options for making your card ecologically responsible, inclusive or simply in line with the product it is associated with, whether visually, by touch or smell.

Because we don't always have all the possibilities in mind, keep this cheat sheet close at hand!

Download the cheat sheet here!

Ecological alternatives to PVC cards

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We've already mentioned here that the trend towards metallic cards, at least for some segments, has been something we've seen grow. Whether it's pure metal cards, which are very expensive, or hybrid cards, which mix PVC with metal, differentiation has been sought in terms of the card's base material.

But in fact, alternatives to traditional PVC aren't just made of metal. Following the trend towards ecology, institutions are increasingly looking for materials that allow them to communicate the environmental concern of their business. In this sense, alternatives have begun to appear on the market that had already been available from suppliers for some time, but had not yet attracted the interest of customers. Here's a small example of communication based on these choices. See CaixaBank's communication.

In this context, and in addition to the metal options we shared in a previous article, here are some other alternatives to PVC that can be considered:

Recycled PVC

100% recycled plastic is an alternative to PVC, guaranteeing equivalent print quality and durability, but greatly reducing environmental impact. rPVC minimizes the production of new PVC, which contributes to reducing the problem of plastic landfills.

This material is compatible with the usual customization options.

PLA - Polylactide resin

PLA (Poly Lactide Acid) cards are made from corn, generating a composite material that is EN13432 certified and guarantees 100% reliability. They have lower CO2 emissions compared to PVC products and do not use petroleum.

As a compostable material under very specific conditions, it does not biodegrade in an uncontrolled environment. It is compatible with different physical and logical customization options.

Ocean plastic

These cards are made with plastic recovered from the oceans (e.g. nylons from trawling), helping the oceans and wildlife to deal with plastic pollution. This product is the result of a partnership between Giesecke+Devrient (one of the world's largest card manufacturers) and Parley for the Oceans.

These are just some of the alternatives to consider when thinking about making your card greener. You can count on Contisystems to help you along this path to sustainability, whether in choosing your card, producing cardmails with FSC-certified material, or even with collection and recycling services for old cards.