Physical card embossing

There are three types of physical (plastic/metal) card:

• Mag stripe card – Card data is stored in a magnetic strip. A customer swipes the card to use it. This type of card is easy to counterfeit, because the data in the strip is static.
• EMV contact card – Card data is stored in a chip. A customer dips (inserts) the card to use it. The cryptography in the chip creates tumbling security codes, making it much harder to counterfeit, but it costs more to issue.
• Dual interface card – Card data is stored in a chip. There is also an embedded antenna, so a customer can either dip or tap to use the card. This is the most convenient type of card for the customer, but it's the most expensive to issue.

You can use the Pismo platform to issue physical cards using your chosen embossing provider or providers. After setting up your program, you need to meet with your Pismo representative to configure your embossing provider(s) and schedule.

The embossing process occurs daily according to your requested schedule, which can run at different times on different days. During an embossing run, Pismo submits all eligible cards and their required data via an encrypted file to the embosser(s) via OFTP or SFTP.

The following API endpoints allow you to view or revise your personalized embossing configuration information:

• Get nominal card embossing information
• Update nominal card embossing group
• Get noname card embossing information
• Update noname card embossing group

For nominal cards, a customer is designated the cardholder at card creation. Noname cards are batch-generated and not initially associated with customers, which occurs later.

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The embossing layouts used for noname and named embossing processes are different. If you plan to use both noname and named cards, you need to set up layouts for both with your chosen embosser.

The printed name on cards is set when you create an account. After that, you can call the Update card information endpoint to revise it.

Embossers

The following are embossers Pismo currently work with:

• JallCard
• Gemalto (Thales)
• Alterosa
• EM1
• Idemia
• Intelcav
• Seshasai
• Valid

If you have an embosser not listed here that you would like to work with, please let us know.

Embossing rules

A nominal card may not be embossed for the following reasons:

• Card's account does not have a registered address
• Address with special characters (non-UTF-8 standard characters)
• Printed name—No letters with accents, numbers, or special characters - only letters (a-z|A-Z) and space, as specified in the ISO EMV tag 5F20 for cardholder name.
• Does not have a CREATED status. Does not apply to on-demand customers, see below.
• The card password has not been updated, unless configured otherwise (refer to section following).

Passwords

For each and every Pismo card, a random password is generated when the card is created.

Noname cards

You do not need to update the card password — the card can be sent for embossing with the random password generated at card creation time. If the issuer prompts the cardholder to change the password, it can be done, for example, when activating the card.

Nominal cards

• The issuer can assign a random password or work with the cardholder to update the password before being sent for embossing. This is required for the card to be embossed.
• If the issuer works with on-demand, there is no need to change the password for the card to be embossed (refer to section below).

On demand embossing - override card password updated requirement

By default, cards enter the embossing window when the card's password is updated. Once that happens, they are embossed in the next embossing window present in your embossing configuration.

If your embossing configuration includes the ONDEMAND option , the password update is no longer the trigger for the card to enter the next embossing window. On-demand customers can emboss cards with NORMAL, BLOCKED, PENDING, and WARNING statuses, in addition to CREATED.

With this option, there are three endpoints you can use to emboss the card:

• Add card to next scheduled embossing
• Get encrypted card data for embossing
• Resend cards for embossing

Talk to your Pismo representative about setting this or open a JIRA ticket with type = Settings.

Troubleshooting embossing errors

A card issuer might see the following errors. For all these errors except card_status_invalid, the card is automatically embossed after correction.

• account_address_not_found—You need to register the cardholder address.
• account_address_inactive — You need to activate the cardholder address.
• account_phone_not_found— If the client has a phone number sent in the embossing file, you need to register the phone number for the cardholder.
• card_pci_password_unchanged — If the customer updates the card password for embossing, you must also update the password.
• card_status_invalid —Card has invalid status for embossing. For ondemand, CREATED, NORMAL, BLOCKED, WARNING and PENDING statuses are allowed. Otherwise, only CREATEDis allowed. For update password, only CREATED status is allowed. If necessary, you must create another card for the cardholder.
• invalid_printed_name —You must correct the printed name.
• account_address_zipcode_invalid —You must correct the cardholder's zip code/postal code.

For the following errors, you need to contact Pismo with a Service Desk request:

• account_not_found
• customer_not_found
• card_pci_not_found
• card_not_found
• card_type_invalid
• internal_error
• embossing_line_not_formatted
• embossing_line_not_encrypted
• embossing_line_invalid_format
• embossing_undelivered
• card_validation_error

Embossing API endpoints

You can use the following API endpoints to generate embossed cards:

• Create card
• Reissue physical card
• Create noname card bulk - After this call, you need to call Start noname card bulk process to begin the embossing process.

All of these calls have an embossing_custom_field you can use to send data to your embosser. This field is a string that can store up to 1000 characters, allowing you to personalize it with, for example, a delivery tracking code or to indicate whether the card should be plastic or metal.

Embossing events

Embossed cards generate the following sequence of events:

As described above, when a card is added to the file to be sent to an embosser or rejected, it generates an Card embossing notification received event. For a noname card bulk, this means that up to 10,000 events could potentially be generated.

For example (success)

{
   "event_id":"09a3fbd1-8e36-5350-a004-a31c741f3c49",
   "timestamp":"2021-03-19T01:01:29Z",
   "domain":"cards",
   "event_type":"embossing",
   "schema_version":1,
   "org_id":"TN-ddce7e50-0485-49ec-a910-866dff0bfd0f",
   "cid":"83e07ddf-f453-4f8c-b905-2a588283dac3",
   "data":{
      "account_id":100105000,
      "customer_id":100102000,
      "program_id":1234,
      "card_id":5560000,
      "card_status":"CREATED",
      "tracking":"EM1008.202103190101001234",
      "error_message":""
   }
}

See Event data for more information about events.

See our Data and reporting guide for more information on events and setting up event notifications.