CompoSecure’s Arculus Targets Payments, Authentication, and Cold Storage Simultaneously, Opening the Door to Multi-Application Metal Cards

CompoSecure, a market leader in metal payment cards, authentication, and security solutions, intends to provide the smart card market with an all-encompassing solution, integrating payments, authentication, and crypto cold storage on the multi-application Arculus Card. Given CompoSecure's strong market offering with the Arculus Card, alongside its position as a market leader in the metal payment card market, it is a natural next step to combine its range of offerings into a unified and ubiquitous smart card solution.

Both for traditional banks and neo and challenger banks, achieving equilibrium between robust security and a premium customer experience remains a challenge. Ensuring a seamless user experience is paramount for financial entities, as they aim to provide customers with convenience, while instilling trust in the security of their services. Now in 2024, the goal is to implement authentication methods that verify customers' identities effectively, without burdening them with cumbersome procedures such as extensive personal questioning. Given that establishing and maintaining trust through customer interactions is crucial, authentication processes must be both efficient and accurate.

The modern bank continues to face the challenge of acquiring and retaining potential customers and ensuring that the payment cards it issues have a consistent level of usage. Payment card solutions, including flat cards and instant issuance ones, are testament to this, defining the importance of providing immediate service to enable cards to enter the market and be utilized instantly. However, the payment card market can certainly be considered a mature market, and banks are confronted with the key challenge of how to ensure the cards they issue retain top-of-wallet status in a market that is rapidly expanding in the presence of next-generation technologies and materials.

CompoSecure has cemented itself as a key vendor in the payments card market, having existing partnerships with a variety of neo and challenger banks such as Monzo, N26, and Curve. Such financial organizations have drifted away from a branch-based environment, instead preferring to eschew physical customer interaction and establishing the cards they issue as the physical branded anchor between bank and customer. From the perspective of the issuer, such cards now serve as crucial touchpoints for maintaining brand visibility and relevance in the eyes of the customer base. CompoSecure has positioned the Arculus authentication and digital asset management solution as a reinforcement for the issuer-customer relationship, enhancing the premium experience with the further potential to set institutions apart in a mature market and ensuring a top-of-wallet status for the issuer.

CompoSecure has set its Arculus Authenticate apart from the rest of the market through its provision of custom-branded hardware keys integrated into multi-function metal payment cards, enabling CompoSecure to maintain full control over the consumer experience, while offering banks a flexible and trusted solution.

The primary challenge lies in bolstering security measures without creating unnecessary hurdles for the user. Typically, when seeking to implement FIDO Authentication, a solutions provider must leverage the deployment of additional devices such as a dongle or token, requiring the user to juggle multiple devices and reducing the propensity of adoption. CompoSecure has sought to blend the two devices into a single metal payment card form factor, meaning that tapping the card to the smartphone is the only stage required and utilizes a technology that is already near-ubiquitous. The Arculus Authenticate solution embeds authentication functionality directly into the card, striking a balance between security and user convenience on a device displaying the bank’s brand.

This is critical as it performs a vital role in maintaining the customer relationship given that a bank’s payment card serves as a tangible representation of its brand. A payment card that can increase customer satisfaction, while also performing its functionality brings the customer experience to the next level and ensures consistent usage. CompoSecure has sought to provide the market with a single card that can fulfill multiple tasks, whether this be authorizing payments, managing digital keys, or authenticating the customer—the versatility provides a positive reinforcement in the bank-to-customer relationship.

While multi-application cards have been present in a variety of smart card end markets, the combination of authentication, payments, and cold storage is a market first for the payment card market, providing financial issuers with a solution that can tackle both issues of security and convenience for the cardholder in a unified, holistic offering.