Casinos
A player card is the hardest working card in the building. It gets swiped at a slot machine, read at the players club desk, and handed across a restaurant counter, sometimes dozens of times in a single visit. Then it sits in a wallet until the next trip and does it all again.
That use pattern, not the artwork, sets the specification. A magnetic stripe encoded at 300 Oersted is low coercivity and gives up its data more easily in ordinary handling. High coercivity at 2750 Oersted resists that, which is why a card expected to live in a wallet and be read constantly is usually specified that way. CR80 at 30 mil, the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 credit card size and thickness, is what most card readers on a floor are built around.
The number on the card has to match what your player tracking system issues. Accounts are serialized, so each card usually carries a unique number, encoded on the stripe or chip, printed as a barcode, or both. Printing a unique number per card is variable data work, priced and produced differently from a run of identical cards.
Plastek manufactures casino cards and property supplies in house, including player cards, VIP and loyalty cards, key cards, ID badges, door hangers, and lock inserts. Tier cards can be separated by finish rather than by artwork alone, and security features like holograms and UV ink can be added where a card needs to be verified by eye.
Before committing to a full run, ask for a sample encoded to your specification. Run it through your own reader at the desk and at a machine. If it reads, run the job. If it does not, you spent one card instead of a run.
Request a quote on custom casino cards or call the Plastek production team at 1-888-762-2737.
