What is 

ABS
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, plastic material formed through injection molding, used for some smart cards.

Access Control Card
Magnetic or chip cards with or without photo used to enter restricted areas eg. ID badges.

Blank Cards
Cards with no printing usually used in imagining machines

Chip
A piece of silicon etched with an electronic circuit.

Coercivity
A measure of the strength of a magnetic field. Fields are expressed as low or high by the terms LoCo and HiCo.

Combi-card
Holding both contact and contactless technology on one card.

Contact
A point of electrical connection between a smart card and its external interface device.

Contact Card
Any card where information is transferred to a reader via a series of contact points located on the card.

Contactless Card
Smart card which transfers data using radio frequency technology via a transmitter and receiver.

Degaussing
Magnetic stripe data erasure.

Digitizing
Conversion of non-textual data to digital form.

EMV
A standard or specification endorsed by Mastercard or Visa.

Electronic Purse
Smart card stored value program.

Embossing
Characters in relief on the front surface of a card.

Encoding
Recording electronic information on to a magnetic stripe.

Encryption
Transferring information based on a key to make it un-intelligible to unauthorized parties.

Financial Hologram Card
Financial cards using a hologram, 30 mil thickness, ISO cards, MasterCards/Visa and others.

Financial Other
Usually Debit, Check, Charge or ATM cards not using a hologram.

GSM
Global System for Mobile Communication, a widely used digital mobile phone standard.

Gift Card
A retail prepaid card usually initiated at cash or checkout.

Hologram
A flat optical image which looks three-dimensional to the naked eye.

Holographic foil
the foil used to carry embossed holographic images.

Initialization
Programming a smart card chip with data that is the same for a batch of cards.

ID Card
Card which identifies both the bearer and the issuer. All financial transaction cards are ID cards.

ISO
International Standards Organization, central body for formation and dissemination of industry standards for all national standards bodies.

Issuer
An individual or organization that issues identification cards to individual or corporate cardholders.

Lithography or Offset Printing
Most common process for plastic card printing based on the concept that oil and water are not compatible. The ink represents the oil and the alkaline fountain solution represents the water. These are the two main components which must interact during the printing process, allowing the ink to adhere to the image area of a printing plate while the fountain solution repels the ink from the non-image area.

Lamination
Using plates on a press to fuse the various layers of a plastic card together.

Loyalty Card
Usually a retail frequent user card offering promotional benefits.

Magnetic Stripe
The strip of magnetic recording material on an ID card.

Membership Card
Usually a club member card for ID purpose.

Multi-application Card
Smart card that can handle a variety of applications.

Non-magnetic Card
Cards without a magnetic stripe eg. ID cards.

Oersted
The unit of magnetic coercive force used to define difficult of erasure of magnetic material.

Off-line
A transaction via paper or reader not connected to a central system.

On-line
A transaction on a terminal permanently connected to a network that is on-line to the card account.

Optical Card
Card with information recorded on an optical memory stripe, similar to compact disks.

Other Secure Card
Usually Retail , Oil/Gas, Telecom, Transit, Pay TV cards.

Pay TV Card
Usually a chip card subscribing to a television service eg. satellite TV.

Personalization
Printing, encoding and programming a card with data specific to an individual cardholder.

Prepaid Card
A card paid for at point of sale permitting the holder to buy goods and services up to the prepaid value.

Promotional Card
A card offering special benefits to users eg, discount card.

Proximity Card
A contactless card whose presence and data can be sensed by an interface device not in physical contact with the card.

PVC
Polyvinyl chloride, the most widely used plastic material for ID cards.

Radio Frequency Card (RFID)
A proximity card in which the coupling between the card and the interface device is by radio.

Secure Card
Cards with an intrinsic value. eg. financial, other secure etc.

Screen Printing
Method in which ink is forced through a design-bearing screen made of silk or other material onto the substrate being printed.

Signature Panel
The area of an ID card where the cardholder enters a signature.

SIM
Subscriber Identification Module: the smart card necessary for the operation of GSM phones.

Skimming
Copying the magnetic stripe encoding from one card to another.

Smart Card (aka Chip Card, IC Card)
A plastic credit card sized card that contains one or more semiconductor chips. In the capability category, there are three types:

Memory Card
smart card that stores and retrieves serial “streams” of data that are sent to or received from the semiconductor chip.

Protected Memory Card
smart card that requires a secret code or PIN number to be entered before the data can be sent to or received from the semiconductor chip.

Microprocessor Card
contains a microprocessor chip with a microcode that defines a command structure, a data file structure and a security structure in the card.

SET
Secure Electronic Transaction, a MasterCard/Visa backed standard to allow safe Internet trading via encryption certification of all parties involved in a transaction.

Stored Value Card (aka cash card, electronic purse, prepaid card)
A financial card that is loaded with a certain amount of money with each purchase amount deducted from the card.

Substrate
Material upon which a plastic card is printed.

Transit Card
Magnetic or chip card used for transportation services eg. subway card.

Telecom Card
Magnetic or chip card used for telephone services eg. GSM card, prepaid card.

Traditional Card
A magnetic or non magnetic card not using chip card technology.

UV Printing
UV printing is used to print on plastic, foil, and specialty substrates. UV light is used to dry specially formulated inks that are printed on non-porous materials. In conventional printing, ink dries as it is absorbed into paper. Because plastic is not absorbent, the ink must be dried on the top surface using UV light.

Weigand Wire
Magnetic media embedded in cards for access control applications.