RFID Cards

What decides the cost of an RFID card

A finished card carries two things people confuse: the chip inside and the card the holder receives. Both, plus how the order is printed, encoded, tested and packed, sit inside a single per-card figure, which is why two quotes for a card that looks identical on paper can differ several times over. Fix the specification below before comparing numbers; indicative bands are confirmed in the quotation, against a like-for-like specification.

A bare price-per-card comparison misleads because it hides these levers: a quote well below a like-for-like specification usually signals a different chip die, a thinner body or omitted testing rather than a genuine saving. Send the chip, material, print, encoding and quantity together and the comparison becomes real. Genuine, traceable silicon is worth confirming for any access-control or hospitality programme. Start from RFID cards; indicative bands are confirmed in the quotation.

LF 125 kHz or HF 13.56 MHz

The card body and print are the same either way; the frequency decides security, phone compatibility and which readers the card talks to. Match the band to the installed system first, then choose the material.

For a mixed estate, dual-frequency LF+HF cards (specified per project) let one credential work on old LF readers and new HF readers while the readers are replaced in phases. Confirm the exact chip and reader model with your system provider before ordering: LF options start from the EM4305 and T5577 cards, HF from DESFire and MIFARE Plus.

How long cards, tags and wristbands last

Chip ratings are not the life of a finished product. NXP rates DESFire EV3 for around 1,000,000 write cycles and 25 years of data retention (EV2: around 500,000 cycles and 25 years), and NTAG 213/215/216 for around 100,000 write cycles and 10 years; how long a card, tag or wristband lasts depends on its body, its construction, how it is handled and where it is used. We publish no lifespan figure for card or wristband bodies and do not rank them by durability: what we know comes from products in real use, not from test data.

Judge service life with a small pilot in the actual environment, and set the target at a working percentile rather than the average. Where a laundry tag’s product page gives a wash-cycle count, that count comes from real laundry use, not from a test, and Proud Tek guarantees it under the conditions stated with it on that page.

• Bend and handling — wallet flex, drops and repeated taps load the lamination edges and the joint between antenna and chip; describe how the card will be carried and presented.
• Material and finish — the body material, lamination and surface finish all affect how well a card stands up to handling, so confirm the chosen body on a sample for the use.
• Lamination and seal — moisture, heat or chemicals that reach the inlay through a lamination defect or an open edge can stop a card working; name the exposures so the construction can be checked.
• UV and outdoor exposure — sunlight and weather act on the card body, the print and any adhesive; say how long lanyard or outdoor credentials spend outside, so the material can be proposed and checked on a sample.
• Wash and heat cycles — a laundry tag’s wash-cycle figure holds only under the conditions stated with it; a hotter or more aggressive wash, a different press or finisher, or steam sterilisation is a different condition, so specify the actual process, including any autoclave stage.
• Stressors stack — water, sunlight and abrasion together, as on a poolside lanyard card, are a different condition from any one of them alone, so pilot the card where it will be used.