In this two-part series, we are looking at reasons why you may need an ID card
Time and Attendance
Tracking time and attendance of employees is commonplace in many organisations. These systems are put in place to record when staff start and stop work and sometimes even the department and location the work takes place. They also log breaks, lunch breaks, vacation time and sickness absences.
Many businesses already have processes such as this in place but using paper-based or password-based systems, but these are easy to compromise so should be replaced with electronic systems, often using cards containing electronic data.
But for an electronic time and attendance tracking system to work, multi-application smart cards are required. These will be used to grant access to physical and logical resources as well as track attendance. These cards contain technology which ranges from a basic magnetic stripe to ultra-high frequency proximity systems that track an employee’s whereabouts when they are in a specific building.
There are many sectors that may require the use of a time and attendance tracking system, but two of the most common would be:
Corporate
As we have already discussed, the purpose of a time and attendance tracker in a corporate environment would be to log an employee’s hours of work and movements within a specific building and/or network. The ultra-high frequency proximity cards would allow business managers to pinpoint the cardholder’s whereabouts if it was a necessary security feature.
Education
Students and staff movements can be tracked and monitored using a smart card linked to a time and attendance system. This not only verifies whether students are in the right class at the right time but also can monitor absence, sickness or in the event of a mustering scenario in an emergency, can verify that all the students are accounted for and easily located quickly.
Loyalty and Memberships
It is becoming much more commonplace for the use of membership and loyalty cards in organisations. Business owners are recognising that customer loyalty needs to be rewarded as often as feasible and provide an incentive for these customers to recommend your brand to friends and family.
By adding a smart card element to these loyalty and membership cards, it allows the card owners to potentially gain access to members-only facilities, bars or other forms of reward schemes.
Having a personalised loyalty or membership card can make the customer feel as though they are in possession of something much more exclusive than the paper or card versions currently available in many high street chains. This is something much more attainable with the use of an ID card printer.
These loyalty and/or membership cards can also be used as a form of security. So only the person identified in the photo of the card can be allowed access to use facilities or make the most of the benefits that come with the membership.
Payments
Plastic cards have become the global standard for electronically purchasing goods and services. In the last 20 years, less secure magnetic stripe and embossed numbering systems have been replaced by a secure electronic system of data and keys held on the card’s embedded chip. This standard was established and has been championed by EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa). These secure cards can be issued locally, for example in branch at the point of account opening, using desktop card printers fitted with the appropriate EMV encoding devices.
For convenience, efficiency and speed, many transport smart ticketing solutions now also have a payment application loaded on the chip of the smart card. This enables passes to be used for low-value contactless payments at transport hubs for items such as food, beverages and newspapers.
Pre-paid payment cards are commonplace in locations such as university campuses. Students can add money to their card from a chosen application and use the card to pay for goods and services at shops, cafes and student bars on campus. This can help students feel safer as they are not required to carry cash.
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