How are gift cards manufactured?

With more than

2.8 billion credit cards in use worldwide

, plastic cash is perhaps the second-most popular printed item on Earth (behind real cash, of course). Have you ever wondered how your credit card(s) came to be? 

We’re not talking about manufacturing or materials. We’re talking about the art of credit card design and branding. It starts with a credit card comp.

When mergers lead to new brand identities or card designs, Duggal is there to provide the focus group test comps that corporate marketers need in order to gather accurate data. In this example, we produced six double-sided design directions in multiples to go to focus groups in three locations in the U.S. The comps were complete with foil effects, magnetic stripes, chips and holograms.

There is a brand connection in owning a credit card. To create that tactile sense of importance, we often employ dimensional printing to simulate embossing on plastic along with custom UV varnish effects. This ability is valuable to issuers because it ensures a design and its unique features are ready for mass production with no mishaps or errors.

Many membership cards now take the form of a credit card. This Lady Drinks club membership card features our dimensional printed patterning in gold foil as a design feature in conjunction with a raised and gloss spot varnish coated logo. The card numbers were printed on the back in consecutive order to 100 using our variable data program.

Duggal is able to produce short run prototypes of gift cards that will stand out with foil effects, embossing and vibrant color. The highest resolution is available for gift cards along with Digital Emboss and Digital Spot UV.

Imagine receiving a personalized gift card from a global brand. That’s the honor that J.Crew clients and influencers enjoy annually for the retailer’s Madewell denim, the most popular product line in J.Crew stores. The 4,500 gift cards were not only personalized, but also embossed and foil stamped before being nestled in a bifold with a single glue dot. The envelopes are personalized as well.

Looking to produce a credit card, membership card or gift card for your brand? Start with the art and let Duggal lead you to a production-ready prototype.

Contact us

and ask to be connected to our Packaging Comp Division.

More than 3.4 billion gift cards were sold in the United States in 2021.

Paper or plastic? Gift cards don't need to be trash

As the holidays approach, experts estimate that roughly 60% of consumers plan on purchasing gift cards this December, making it one of the most popular gift-giving options. As a $173 billion business, gift cards have come a long way since they were first introduced in 1994.

More than 3.4 billion gift cards were sold in the United States in 2021 and 47% of U.S. adults said they have one or more unused gift cards in their possession, according to Research and Markets. But as environmentally conscious consumers demand more sustainable products, plastic gift cards have often flown under the radar, despite frequently ending up as plastic waste.

"As someone who works everyday trying to reduce plastic pollution, even I did not appreciate how many plastic gift cards are sold in the United States,” Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, which is working to eliminate single-use plastics and plastic pollution around the globe, told ABC News.

Most of those billions of gift cards are made from plastic, but some retailers, like Starbucks, Apple, and Amazon, have begun to sell paper or cardboard cards, which come from a renewable source and are easier to recycle. The best sustainable option is an electronic gift card, which has zero waste, but the majority are still produced in plastic.

"Seventy percent of them are made from polyvinyl chloride plastic,” Enck said. "The reason we’re so concerned about polyvinyl chloride plastic, or PVC, is because it’s poisonous to produce."

Tends of thousands of unused plastic gift cards are being discarded in Turkey, creating an environmental hazard.

Courtesy Sedat Gündo

The Environmental Protection Agency classified vinyl chloride, a key component in the production of PVC, as a hazardous pollutant and human carcinogen. The production and disposal of PVC plastic puts a variety of people at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals.

"I don't think there's a risk from handling the PVC cards, but there definitely is a risk from manufacturing them,” Enck told ABC News. “If these cards are being burned, or even going to a permitted municipal waste incinerator in the United States, they pose a problem.”

The EPA is currently weighing whether to classify PVC plastic as hazardous waste, which would force entities to properly discard PVC in a responsible way.

Because it’s so difficult to dispose of, the bulk of PVC waste, including gift cards and bales of cut-out PVC from the production of gift cards, often end up overseas and illegally dumped in countries like Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia, experts said.

Tends of thousands of unused plastic gift cards are being discarded in Turkey, creating an environmental hazard.

Courtesy Sedat Gündo

"The reality is it’s not recyclable and it ends up here, in an agricultural field," Sedat Gündoğdu, a biologist and professor at Cukurova University in Turkey, who focuses on plastic pollution, told ABC News.

Gündoğdu has collected heaps of discarded gift cards from U.S. and U.K. retailers that have been illegally dumped and buried in agricultural areas across Turkey.

"Users in the United States are throwing out these cards, thinking they're being recycled, but they're really being sold to places like Turkey where they get shipped over and they're just getting dumped,” Gündoğdu said.

Some of the discarded cards Gündoğdu finds are new and unused. Chanda Wicker, a senior vice president at InComm Payments, a payments technology company, told ABC News that the gift card industry is working towards forecasting consumer demand to “prevent over-production of cards and reduce industry waste.”

Tends of thousands of unused plastic gift cards are being discarded in Turkey, creating an environmental hazard.

Courtesy Sedat Gündo

Wicker said paper cards are typically less expensive than PVC cards to manufacture and that 70% of the cards InComm Payments have purchased from contracted printers are made from paper.

Although plastic continues to remain popular, the Retail Gift Card Association Sustainability Task Force told ABC News it is "working on publishing a Sustainability Best Practice guide" to help retailers "make decisions that drive us towards a more sustainable future."

Because of a lack of curbside recycling options for gift cards, the Vinyl Institute, a trade organization representing PVC manufacturers, says “most PVC materials are used in durable products that last for decades, very little is in single-use applications,” and that plastic gift cards provide an opportunity for “the PVC recycling community to collaborate on developing take-back programs.”

If you do want to purchase gift cards this year, both Gündoğdu and Enck recommend e-cards or paper alternatives, and they urge popular gift card retailers and grocery stores to tell companies to stop producing PVC cards.

"PVC cards should be banned because we have paper alternatives, which are less toxic than plastic," Gündoğdu said.

If you do have old plastic gift cards and want to dispose of them safely, Enck recommends throwing them away in the trash.

"Definitely don't put it in your recycling bin, and contact companies and tell them to stop making PVC gift cards as soon as possible."