An increasing number of companies have moved from standard plastic badges to more sophisticated and secure smart cards. They want to combine the visual and electronic personalization of their cards. This can be done via contact (ISO7816) or via contactless (Mifare, DESFire, Hitag, HID iCLASS, i-code, Legic) interfaces.

To program integrated circuit cards (ICC) a printer must be equipped with a smart card contact station and a smart card programmer. This is a device very similar to a smart card reader/writer that is adapted to work as an encoder for memory cards and CPU cards. Smart card encoders are also referred to as card couplers.

CardWerk can upgrade your existing printer with our encoder kit or assemble and test a smart card printer with integrated contact station and smart card encoder.

Our smart card printer/encoder package is a powerful smart card programmer for:

• smart card personalization
• smart card application loading
• smart card customization

The resulting system can then combine the printing and the encoding processes.

CardWerk can also customize commercial card imaging software to enable a coordinated personalization process that embraces card encoding and card printing.

With their modular design, the encoder kits are easy to install. The complete package (serial cable, installation guide, demo software, and DLL file with programmer's references) integrates smoothly into any software and hardware environment via PCSC.

If you don't already have smart card programming software, CardWerk can write the program for you.

Most printers come with a chip encoder option. We can usually help writing software that supports those modules.

Contact smart cards can be encoded via an ISO7816 1-3 compliant encoder via PC/SC interface.

For contactless cards we use encoders
that support most ISO 14443 and ISO 15693 compliant chip cards.

Encoder kits are a real added value for your card printers.

Unless you have the expertise to set up the system, CardWerk can integrate the encoder into the printer and configure the card imaging software for you.

Contact us for more information about smart card enabled printers, encoders, and pricing.