Convego^® Wood: reconnect your customers with nature across every generation

Wood is beautiful, strong, and renewable – an extraordinary natural material with endless uses. Wood products can have a long life and are often reused or recycled again and again. However, significant challenges must be overcome to use wood to create a payment card.

Most importantly, Convego^® Wood must comply with strict card scheme requirements that, when written, were based on the use of plastic for the payment card body. These requirements – for example, the durability and longevity of the card – needed to be balanced with preserving the sustainable aspects of using wood as a material and keeping the aesthetic qualities that make Convego^® Wood so appealing.

Unlike metals and fossil-fuel-based products (such as plastics), our forests can be a renewable resource. With proper management, a flow of wood products can be maintained indefinitely. Many trees are purposely grown to extract timber for production and development. Wood is more energy-efficient than plastic and metal. The majority of the energy utilized in timber production comes from drying the lumber, making wood a more ecologically sound material than plastic.

There is a difference between deforestation and sustainably managed forests. When you manage a forest to grow lumber and wood products, another tree is planted for each one cut down.

As trees come in all different shapes, sizes, and thicknesses, it is difficult to predict how many payment cards can be created from one tree. Also, the different parts of a tree, once cut down, can be used for many different purposes. We only use lumber to create our payment cards, leaving the chips, sawdust and bark for other applications. Instead of counting a “number of trees”, the industry uses m3 of wood when it refers to quantities.

Maple is one of the most popular types of wood used worldwide. It is incredibly strong, durable, and looks great. Woodworkers and furniture aficionados gravitate towards maple for its light, creamy color, smooth grain pattern, and impressive longevity. In a nutshell, we chose maple for its aesthetic appeal and commercial usefulness.

Yes. Apart from being made from wood, a Convego^® Wood card functions precisely like a conventional card made from plastic. Inside the card, the technical components; antenna, chip, magnetic stripe, and contactless functionality are identical to any other card in your customers’ wallets.

No. The Convego^® Wood card is designed for everyday use, so mechanical and environmental stresses associated with regular card use do not affect it. Customers can rest assured that their Convego^® Wood card will last as long and be just as tough as a conventional card.

Yes. Convego^® Wood can be used in precisely the same way you would use any other payment card. In ATMs, in-store payments, or contactless payments – all are possible with Convego^® Wood.

In the same way that plastic cards can be slightly deformed if placed under continuous pressure, so too can Convego^® Wood cards. If this happens, gentle hand pressure in the opposite direction can usually correct it.

The card is made from slices of genuine maple wood – each one will look different and unique. They will generally all have gentle, straight grains and vary in color from light to caramel-brown tones. This variance is expected, and part of the charm of owning a payment card made from natural wooden materials.