If you’ve recently received a new credit card, you may gotten one where the numbers are on the back, and there are no longer any raised, embossed numbers--or any numbers--on the front.
It’s a trend that has taken off in the past few years. The biggest reason for this innovation might be that raised numbers are no longer needed for a card to function.
Formerly, the numbers had to be raised on the front of the card so that when it was run through a card reader, an imprinted image of those numbers would appear on a slip of paper for customers to sign. For some reason, the embossed numbers have persisted, even though the manual method of creating a carbon copy has long passed out of use.
Then came magnetic strips, which added security, but is fairly easy to decrypt, for example, using special cloning devices that thieves can place over the top of magnetic regular card readers. Now with the advent of chips, cardholder information is encrypted into a unique code that is difficult to steal.
And since numbers are no longer needed on the front of the card, they're increasingly being moved to the back, leaving the front of the card free for...you guessed it, branding! Expect credit card issuers to start making their cards more interesting to look at as they strive to capture more market share from an increasingly crowded credit card market.
