7. Card Durability and Security

Card Durability

Various types of materials are used to protect plastic cards. Overlay varnishes, holograms and patch overlaminate materials provide card durability and security, depending on user requirements.

Card durability has to do with how well the card withstands various forms of environmental stress. Durability entails resistance to abrasion (such as passing the card through a magnetic stripe or bar code reader), protection from image fading when exposed to sunlight, and resistance to damage when immersed in water or exposed to chemicals.

Card Security

Another important factor in applications such as ID cards and driver's licenses is resistance to tampering, alteration, and/or replication. With the use of protective materials such as overlaminates, cards can be constructed to eliminate the potential of tampering and alteration.

Card security means that the card can be verified for authenticity. Techniques include the application of overlay varnish or overlaminate materials with hologram images. Use of these materials in constructing cards makes replication by anyone without access to the custom hologram image materials virtually impossible.