18 Apr 2017

Evolis, the provider of personalisation systems for plastic cards, has been selected by the Shandong Social Security department for the personalisation and instant issuance of multifunctional plastic cards. The cards are co-branded by the Shandong Social Security authority and six Chinese banks, and combine a debit card with a social security card.

400 Avansia printers by Evolis, integrating retransfer printing technology, were equipped with smart card encoders by Chinese system integrator Boya Wuzhou, and deployed across the banks in December 2016. The contract, worth $1.2M, includes consumables and spare parts. "We are proud that our company was selected as part of this innovative high-tech project in China, where multifunctional smart cards have become a real trend," explains Emmanuel Picot, CEO of Evolis.

Developing application of social security card

The Eastern Chinese region of Shandong is one of the most populous and most affluent provinces in the People's Republic of China counting a population of around 97 million people. This innovative project has the aim to further develop the applications of the classic social security card, up to now issued centrally by the social security bureau.

The new financial security card can be issued in the six partner banks ICBC, ABC, CCB, BC, PSBC and Rural Credit Cooperative as a multi-application card offering life insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work-related injury insurance and maternity insurance as well as all functions of common debit cards such as cash withdrawal, transfer, card consumption, investment and wealth management and bill payment, etc.

"Preparations are going very smoothly thanks to our local partner Boya Wuzhou," says Eirik Bakke, Global Sales Director at Evolis.

"The Avansia system is well designed with excellent printing quality and the technical support from Evolis is always responsive"

Expertise in the banking and governmental sector

Evolis has been widely recognised as a provider of card issuance solutions to the Banking and Government sectors for the past 10 years.

Numerous projects with governments around the world have been awarded to the French company for the instant issuance of secure identification cards, such as social security cards, national ID cards, voter cards or driver's licenses and whereby hundreds of thousands of citizens can be equipped with a highly secure official card with minimum delay.

In 2015, Evolis also became the world leader in decentralised issuance of payment cards with more than 55,000 systems installed in bank branches worldwide.

To meet the needs of such complex projects, a dedicated project team develops tailored solutions for system integrators willing to support any card-based project, whether local or global. Due to its flexible manufacturing capabilities and technical expertise, Evolis is able to position itself both on projects requiring large volumes of card issuance terminals and/or strong product customisation.

Avansia system

The Avansia system, released at the end of 2014, represents a new technology for Evolis, that of retransfer. It allows users to print in offset quality and distinguishes itself by high durability. Additional encoding modules, magnetic, chip with and without contact, can be combined to be installed on the Avansia to issue any type of highly secure card.

Retransfer technology is suitable for a large variety of applications such as secured access cards, student IDs, payment cards, official identification cards, driver's licenses, and more.

Mr Weimin Dong, Sales Director at Boya Wuzhou explains: "The Avansia system is well designed with excellent printing quality and the technical support from Evolis is always responsive."