Collected Thoughts on Card Design (Part 2)

My latest collection
SMCC Sports Point VISA
Amazon Mastercard
Mizuho Rakuten VISA
Amazon cards are issued in many countries, so have fun to compare design.

5 Likes

My favorite card design from a Vietnamese bank. Enjoy!

4 Likes

Those colours look remarkably familiar

3 Likes

One thing that interests me from what I’ve seen is that the chinese banks clearly have an interest in experimenting with designs, making them eye-catching, bringing out limited editions and so on. Of course the market in China must be much larger than the market in the UK, but there’s very little of this in the UK. If you’re lucky a new startup might come out with a nice initial design, or the existing banks might come up with a slightly better than average one for their once-in-a-decade redesign, but there’s very little innovation on this front. Revolut sometimes come out with a special edition, but they’re pretty much the only ones. Monzo had the extra colours a few years ago, and beyond that I seem to recall that Lloyds TSB had some special olympic branded cards in 2012.

Going back further, I know that Bank of Scotland issued a number of co-branded “affinity” cards in the 90s and early 2000s, which would provide the relevant organisation with some small amount of money as a result. I suppose they were similar in some sense to the Currensea cards today.

1 Like

They used to have a wide range of designs in the UK. Both Capital One and MBNA had maybe 20 different designs at one time, not sure about the other banks. I think they were all dropped when having first a gold, then a platinum card became the thing to have.

Bring back gold cards!

1 Like

First Direct had a gold credit card which turned black. It did, however, have gold embossed numbers and lettering. Over time they wore away and turned black too. Black is the new gold :man_shrugging:t3:

2 Likes

Yes unfortunately you’re right, black is the new gold and it’s a bit boring imho :sob:

1 Like

Among the last holdout was Smile but they stopped applications a couple of years back.

Bring back the Capital One black cat card!

1 Like

All I want is for the Amex Gold to be metal like in other markets :pensive:

3 Likes

Yes the smile gold card looked good. Was sad when I went to apply and found out it was no longer open to new apps.

My First Direct “Gold” card still has the gold letters and numbers because it stays in the drawer at home. I only use it through GPay/Google Wallet.

1 Like

Mine too. I rarely use it though it’s in GWallet. Years ago FD could charge for the FD account however certain products precluded this. Two of the products were their credit card and a savings account. I kept the card as it has a decent limit.

1 Like


Ping’An Bank Private Banking AMEX Debit (It is said that this is a metal card):thinking:

5 Likes

I just realized, AmEx isn’t very common on debit cards. This one, another one from CGB in China, and AmEx Rewards Checking in the US are the only ones I can think of.

No Amex debit cards in the UK, but looks like you can get them in the Maldives and Ethiopia:

1 Like

Is it rare for Amex cards to be vertical?


7 Likes

That grey one is one of the best designs I’ve ever seen.

7 Likes

Also very rare for the example cardholder name to be anything other than C F Frost.

2 Likes

5 Likes