By next May, BNP Paribas will renew its range of Visa bank cards by adopting, like a growing number of banks, a more sober design.
Crdit Agricole, LCL, Socit Générale… The club of banks adept at old bank card, with its long number embossed on the front, is increasingly deserted. After La Banque Postale, Caisse d’Epargne, Crdit Mutuel and CIC (not to mention all the online banks), BNP Paribas is in turn preparing to leave it.
The Parisian bank today unveiled the new design of its CB Visa bank cards. It aligns with the new standards of the genre: a recycled PVC card; a pure front, stripped of the unique number, the validity date and the name of the holder, rejected on the back; a vertical design, more consistent with the daily use of the card; a notch which makes the card easier to use for the visually impaired.
From February, high-end Visa Infinite cards (bills 337 euros per year) will benefit from the new design. Next will come the Visa Premier and Visa Classic cards, then finally the entry-level Visa Origin cards. The portfolio will be gradually rejuvenated, as renewals occur at the end of the validity period, changes to offers or new subscriptions.
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A fundamental trend
The choice of BNP Paribas is part of an underlying trend, that of simplification of the design of bank cards. Several elements traditionally presented on the front and back are completely obsolete. This is the case of a unique raised number. The latter had only one use: to allow carbon printing on the invoices of the famous clogs, these terminals used in the first years of the bank card. A technology that has now completely disappeared.
Other elements, also in the process of obsolescence, could meet the same fate, in particular the magnetic strip and thespace dedicated to the signatureon the back of current cards.
Bank card: why the embossed numbers have (almost) disappeared