Card personalization and fulfillment company Shoreline has launched an all-in-one system that allows credit unions to instantly issue EMV cards to members right in their branches.

Shoreline, which is owned by digital security company Gemalto, is one of several companies that have embraced instant-issue as a way of helping credit unions increase card activation rates, card usage and member loyalty by getting cards into members' hands quickly. Back in April 2014, the company launched an instant-issuance product, called Cards in an INSTANT, which lets credit unions issue credit and debit cards via in-branch printers. The new system helps credit unions issue EMV cards.

The instant-issue trend is still in its infancy but should be mainstream by 2018, according to a report from research and consulting firm Aite Group. In-branch installations of the software and equipment that makes instant-issue possible will spike this year as well, the report said, landing in an estimated 1,803 financial institutions and over 28,000 branches. By 2018, the report said, that should reach 2,736 financial institutions and over 37,000 branches.

“Our team of experts assists our customers through every step from the actual deployment and installation process to continued support of day-to-day services,” Vadim Kagan, Shoreline's director of business development, said. “By leveraging Gemalto's global EMV expertise, our end-to-end solution eliminates the complexity of chip card personalization and procurement enabling our customers to benefit from immediate EMV card delivery.”

Instant-issue systems generally allow credit union employees to produce and activate new debit and credit cards so members can walk out of a branch with working cards.

With the new Shoreline system, members use a PIN pad to select their PINs during card issuance. An in-house card printer, which has a secure hopper and takes two employees to unlock, can print the whole front and back of a card, as well as put the name and other personalized information on it, said Justin O'Brien, Shoreline's product manager – instant issue. The activation and all of the processor's back-end processes stay the same, he said. Card stock sits in Shoreline's vault and is overnighted to the branch, or branches order boxes of 500 cards and keep them in their own vaults, he said.

Kagan said he's not aware of any reports of credit union employees using instant-issue systems to make fake cards, but processes are in place to help mitigate the risk.

“We do have the ability to set certain hours; everything is logged in the software,” O'Brien said. “They click on an icon…it's logged on the software. We track every little thing that the employees do. We know which computer they issued a card from, what time, whose card, all the information we need for tracking.”

Shoreline's system is cloud-based and costs between $50 and $130 per branch per month; the equipment runs anywhere from $5,000 to $9,000, he said.

The looming EMV liability-shift deadline has upped the ante, and stories of delays in network readiness and possibly the deadline itself take a toll.

“I think everyone is realizing that it's an irreversible trend. With the national large issuers having started that trend last year, the credit unions and the regional banks are starting to follow in their footsteps,” Kagan said. “Yes, there are delays related to the fact that they have the clear dependency on their vendors to actually support the EMV and the actual work and development that needs to happen in order to support this.”

He added, “The processing platform needs to catch up, because if we issue an EMV card and the processing platform doesn't know what to do with the EMV transaction when it comes in, then nothing happens. There has to be a coordination.”

Instant Insights /

Shoreline Launches EMV Instant-Issue System

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