Mastercard Introduces Touch Card: A New Standard for Visually Impaired Individuals

One of the largest payment card issuers has come up with a new standard
This will facilitate the correct choice, especially for the visually impaired
It is currently available at Komerční banka

Some ideas are so brilliantly simple that it makes you wonder why someone didn’t think of it sooner. Up to a quarter of a million people with a visual handicap live in the Czech Republic. About 14 thousand of them are completely or almost blind. What may seem like a matter of course to the average person can be quite a difficult task for a visually impaired person. These include, for example, choosing the right payment card. They all have standardized dimensions, and the majority of the population is guided by sight and their visual appearance when distinguishing them.

You won’t go wrong with the new type of card

One of the largest payment card issuers in the world, Mastercard, has come up with a simple but very effective way to make card payments a little easier for the blind and partially sighted. The new standard is called Touch Card, and its principle lies in the cut-out that each card has. A rounded cut-out indicates a debit card, a square cut-out a credit card and a triangular cut-out a prepaid card. The unique solution of the Touch Card was supported by the Royal National Institute of the Blind from Great Britain with the blind and partially sighted service organization Visions from the United States. Idemia also participated in the project.

“The Touch Card offers tens of thousands of people with partial or total vision loss the opportunity to easily and securely recognize not only their payment card from other cards in their wallet, but also to easily determine whether it is a debit, credit or prepaid card,” says Pavla Císařová, Mastercard’s marketing director for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, adding: “This card can be a good assistance to everyone who finds orientation in their wallet stressful. Mastercard’s innovation is always driven by the desire to create a world for all and provide equal opportunities to use the possibilities of the digital world.”

Touch Card from Mastercard

The playback of a unique confirmation tone is also introduced in the payment terminals. Everyone, especially the visually impaired, can easily recognize that a Mastercard payment has been made successfully. There are already 60,000 such terminals across the country and the number is still increasing. The cutout cards are currently available at Komerční banka, with other banking institutions expected to follow soon.

Author of the article

Dominik Vlasak

Editor, traveler, fan of technology, Star Wars and good coffee.

2023-11-01 18:00:00
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