A vendor has announced a method of instant card issuance it said will allow credit unions todeliver active debit and credit cards to members at the branch withmuch less risk.

Shoreline Business Solutions has roughly 1,300 financialinstitution clients, about 40% of which are credit unions, and hasdubbed the new service Cards in an INSTANT.

Instant card issuance lets credit unions create activated debitand credit cards at specialized printers in their branches. Instantissued cards have been shown to have much higher activation andusage rates than cards which are delivered by other methods andthen rely on cardholders to activate them.

Brian Calabro, vice president of strategic partnerships at RhodeIsland-based Shoreline, said instant issuance has been most usefulwhen opening new accounts or replacing lost or stolen cards.

“This is not really something for the regular reissuingexpiring cards,” Calabro said, “both because those files are reallyvery large and because you aren't going to make someone justgetting a card reissued to come all the way into the branch.”

In addition, providing instantly issued cards requires a creditunion to comply with regulations from Visa and MasterCardoverseeing the storage and handling of the card stock as well asthe data necessary to produce the cards. It's the latter securitythat Calabro said Cards in an INSTANT can help eliminate.

“Most of the security requirements around handling live cardstock are similar to those for handling large amounts of cash orother negotiable instruments,” he said. “But if a credit union usesour cloud-based Cards in an INSTANT it will not have to worry aboutkeeping the data for creating a new card on its own computers,” hesaid.

Calabro explained Shoreline works closely with a credit union'score processor so that when a request for a new account is made,the data unique to the member and the member's new card both arriveat the branch printer at the same time.