Behind all the talk about real-time rails and artificial intelligence, card programs remain the spine of the modern payments experience.
In a market increasingly defined by digital experiences, Thales said transforming how to issue, tokenize and manage cards can be just as important as the payment itself.
In an interview with PYMNTS, Caio Reis, vice president of strategy and marketing at Thales, said modern issuance is emerging as a source of competitive differentiation and that bridging the physical and digital sides of payments is now essential.
With decades of experience supporting card programs worldwide, Thales is focused on connecting the entire issuance chain, from manufacturing and personalization to mobile-first user experiences, through its cloud-based D1 platform.
Reis illustrated how the D1 platform can support financial institutions with the launch of Vipps’ first third-party iOS wallet following Apple opening its NFC access in Europe. In four months, the company helped Vipps launch, and within 24 hours, 200,000 bank accounts had been digitized.
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“This kind of speed, scale and innovation” is what banks expect from partners right now, he said.
Meeting Cardholder Expectations
Consumer expectations have reset around mobile-first, real-time and highly personalized experiences. Incumbent issuers must match FinTech velocity while operating on legacy stacks that weren’t built for it.
Thales’ answer is D1, “a cloud-first platform that enables banks to launch innovative new payment services at the same speed as FinTechs,” delivered via APIs that sit alongside existing infrastructure, he said.
One immediate area of focus is eCommerce checkout. The industry is working to bring the in-store, mobile wallet experience online with network-backed Click to Pay, which aims to end the manual entry of card details. Schemes are mandating adoption on tight timelines, and Thales was the first provider to enable issuers to launch the new experience, Reis said.
Behind those front-end experiences sit security and scale. Thales leans on its cybersecurity heritage, running hardware security modules (HSMs) as part of the D1 platform. With scheme rules and regulatory standards handled by the platform, issuers can move faster without re-engineering their cores.
Time to market is the other lever. D1 typically enables issuers to launch new digital services in less than three months. Thales implemented the Click to Pay mandate for one client in 10 weeks, Reis said. When adoption spikes, scale follows. For a major U.S. eCommerce player that launched its own wallet, Thales went live in six months and reached 3.8 million users three months later.
That mix of speed, security and scale is why more than 600 issuers trust Thales to manage over 200 million cards, he said.
Physical Card Customization and Premium Offers
The physical card still carries weight with customers and brands.
“The card itself is still the most visible and tactile symbol of a bank’s brand,” Reis said, adding that it signals value and status and plays a role in loyalty, particularly in premium segments.
Thales helps issuers translate brand stories into materials and designs, including metal cards, eco-friendly options, including wood, and accessibility features such as cards that vocalize transaction details. Bank of America, for example, has committed to using 100% recycled PVC for its plastic cards, a move supported by Thales as one of its card suppliers.
The experience around the card is getting an overhaul, too. Reis described an “Amazon-like” journey in which cardholders, from within their banking app, can confirm a shipping address, track production and delivery in real time, activate the card instantly on arrival, and set a PIN without visiting a branch. Even the unboxing is treated as a brand moment meant to feel premium, a tactile reinforcement of the issuer’s identity.
Most customers don’t see a trade-off between physical and digital anymore; they want both, choosing the best tool for the moment. Thales’ positioning is to “bridge the gap” so issuers can deliver one integrated experience across channels, Reis said.
Extending Beyond Retail Banking
The appetite for secure, seamless experiences extends beyond retail banking. Thales is adapting the same capabilities, like virtual cards, tokenization and NFC, for sectors such as transit, fuel and fleet, mobility and loyalty. For fleet operators, for example, issuers can provision time- and amount-limited digital cards directly to a temporary driver’s phone, reducing loss and misuse tied to shared plastic cards.
Transit shows how these shifts touch everyday life. Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics, Thales worked with Apple and Île-de-France Mobilités so visitors could move across the city using only the digital wallet on their iPhone without forcing a costly replacement of existing ticketing systems. Similar models are live in places like Hong Kong and the Netherlands. The broader play is to take proven innovations from open-loop payments and apply them where others can’t, so every segment can deliver a premium, mobile-first experience, Reis said.
As Reis put it, “we’re not just helping banks launch digital-first services; we’re giving them the confidence to scale securely, adapt to constant change, and be ready for whatever the next wave of innovation brings.”
