Datacard Group

Datacard Group — which became Entrust Datacard shortly after acquiring Entrust in December 2013 — provides financial institutions, national governments, corporate enterprises and other organizations with technologies they need to establish trusted identities and conduct highly secure transactions. Examples of the company’s diverse offerings include software and hardware used to issue financial cards, produce e-passports and authenticate users looking to access secure networks or conduct financial transactions. The privately held company is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and employs more than 2,000 people in 120 countries.

The company was established in 1969 as DataCard Corporation, also known as Datacard Group, and immediately focused on the needs of the underserved financial card market. Company founder Willis K. Drake led a team of engineers that invented machines that enabled highly secure and highly productive personalization of credit cards. Datacard Group’s high-volume card issuance systems allowed banks and retailers to personalize 1,500 cards per hour with great precision and security. Until the company launched its technologies, the process was slow and riddled with quality problems.

As adoption of financial cards accelerated, the company formed highly collaborative relationships with MasterCard^®, Visa^®, American Express^® and virtually all of the large national banks in the United States. Technical experts from all of the organizations worked together to establish standards that ensure security and interoperability across virtually all payment platforms. Those collaborative relationships expanded over the years and continue today.

Under new ownership in the early 1990s, the company believed they could refine their core technologies and expand into a variety of additional markets including the government and enterprise markets. Shortly after the new owners purchased the company and took it private, development efforts were re-energized and core technologies quickly expanded beyond basic simple card embossing and magnetic stripe encoding. New inline card personalization technologies included color printing that rivaled lithographic output and encoding of both contact and contactless smart cards.

Development efforts led to multiple new offerings, including the world’s first digital photo ID card system and desktop card printer in 1994. Until the launch of this new technology, governments, corporations and other security-minded enterprises primarily used cut-and-paste processes that involved laminating color photographs and paper identification cards. The digital systems brought new levels of security and economy to the identification process.

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Datacard Group steadily grew revenues by introducing solutions for issuing highly secure government credentials, such as driver’s licenses, national IDs, traditional passports and e-passports (which elevated document security by incorporating biometrics, laser engraving, digital imaging, data encryption and other technologies). Significant revenue gains were also driven by continued leadership in the financial card market. Through the 1990s, 2000s and today, a vast majority of the world's credit, debit and prepaid cards are personalized using Datacard® high-volume and desktop issuance systems.