Payments

Cards made of sugar? Yes! Now your Nordea card is made of bioplastic

As of this autumn you can expect a whole new look and feel when you need a new card from Nordea. The new card that will pop into your letter box will be vertical and made of corn starch.

cards-new-nordea-main
This update affects more than 7 million cards.
Kirsi Wiitala, Head of Transaction Banking.

From September 2023 a new chapter for Nordea’s cards begins. In the future all payment cards will be made out of 84% plant-based material: polylactic acid or PLA, a compostable bioplastic derived from plant starch. The other 16% includes necessary components such as the antenna, metal chip and a thin layer of laminate. The production of the cards has moved closer to the Nordics. The cards used to be made in Singapore; now they’re produced in Gdańsk, Poland.

 “This update affects more than 7 million cards in the Nordics. Customers will experience a new card from us, a card with a vertical design, made to fit the market trend. And, the material used in the cards is durable and has lower carbon emissions than traditional PVC plastic,” says Kirsi Wiitala, head of Transacation banking.

Andreas C Andersson, Head of Cards & Mobile Payments.

The cards are automatically renewed

A new card is automatically sent to customers when their current card expires or they need a replacement card to replace a lost or broken one. The old cards will gradually be replaced by new ones over the next few years.

This affects a lot of cards – are they still used?

“Yes they are, but mobile payments are growing a lot. Since 2020 the share of mobile payments of all card payments has grown by more than 86,6 percent per year on average in the Nordics. We estimate that this development will continue and that customers will choose mobile or smart payment more often in future instead of a physical card. It could be that with the development of transaction methods and payment, digital cards will become the norm of the future someday,” says  Andreas C Andersson, Head of Cards & Mobile Payments.

By the end of the year, the updated look will also be applied to the digital cards used in mobile payments wallets.

Layer by layer, what the new cards are made of. All information about the cardholder is now placed on the back of the new card.

In fact...

… close to 20 percent of all payments made this year with Nordea cards in stores and payment terminals in the Nordics are made with mobile payment instruments.

… the design- and material update starts with Nordea's main consumer cards. Plans for further consumer cards as well as Nordea's commercial card portfolio are ongoing.

… update is rolled out for our customers country by country. The new cards will be ready in all our markets from October. 

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