Plastics Limitations with Tony DeSanctis // Cornerstone Hot Takes

So, Tony, I saw on NPR that people are not getting their credit cards for up to two months. What’s going on from the issuer standpoint?

Yeah. Unfortunately, it’s not only cars that are waiting for chips. It’s credit cards, too.

The supply chain issues, to a large extent, have been mitigated. But I think between some of the trade war challenges and the economic and political pressure, it’s been more difficult to get chips for the cards.

We are seeing a lot of delays and lags in plastics availability for most of our clients. It’s been a challenge really all the way back to probably late 2021, as we were dealing with the pandemic and some of the shipping and logistics challenges.

Yeah. And that’s on top of the coin supply issue. Now that it’s been going on for months, I have to imagine customers and members would get really frustrated. What would you recommend for a bank to do to try and communicate this supply issue?

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing is, as a financial institution, bank or credit union, you want to order early.

Historically, six to eight weeks, or two to three months, was a normal sort of lead time as your inventory got low. I think the reality is you really want to try to order a lot earlier in the process.

The other thing I think that helps is the extent to which you’re using white plastics. Those can tend to make it through the pipeline a little bit faster because there’s not that extra step in the process.

But I think ordering early really is probably the biggest takeaway, and just making sure that your inventory doesn’t get low.

And then for those who maybe did a little oopsie and didn’t order so early, any suggestions on how to communicate with customers?

I thought the article did a nice job talking about mobile wallets. We continue to see our clients struggling to drive mobile wallet adoption. Obviously, not having a plastic is not a solution. A mobile wallet is not a solution for no plastic.

But you’d be surprised how many places you can actually use either in-app capabilities or mobile wallet capabilities to make transactions, in terms of Apple Pay, even within Walmart, Walmart Pay, where your credentials are stored and you don’t actually have to have the physical card.

And with that, Tony, where else can banks and credit unions find out more about what’s going on in payments?

Yeah. We’ve got our Payments Schools coming up. We’ve got one at the end of March that we’re super excited about, and we’ve got a few more throughout the course of the year.

So definitely come check us out. We’d love to see you folks and talk more about all the things that are going on in payments, whether that’s regulatory, revenue opportunities or even fun things like plastics production.

Great. Very cool.