Even as wallets on phones grow more capable, the physical card endures as an important point of trust and identity in the payments ecosystem. Across global markets, cards are more than tools for transactions: they provide consumers with a familiar, tangible payment credential while giving issuers a highly visible point of connection with their customers.
That word “identity”, is worth pausing on. Behavioural research on ownership and tangibility has long found that people place more trust in what they can physically hold than in what exists only as data on a screen: a card in a wallet reads as proof in a way a notification on a phone rarely does. For issuers, that is not a nostalgia argument, it is a design principle. Trust is easier to build on something tangible than to fully replicate in software alone.
In Europe, the continued importance of card payments is evident alongside the growth of new digital payment methods. According to the European Central Bank’s 2024 Study on the Payment Attitudes of Consumers in the Euro Area (SPACE), digital payments continue to increase, but established payment methods remain deeply embedded in consumer behaviour. The study, based on responses from around 50,000 euro-area consumers, provides an important indication that the future of payments is likely to involve coexistence rather than the immediate replacement of one form factor by another. (European Central Bank)
Consumers Want Choice
Consumers are increasingly comfortable moving between different ways to pay. Mobile wallets, tokenized credentials and app-based payment experiences are becoming part of everyday life, but card-based payments remain deeply established.
In 2024, 55% of euro-area consumers said they preferred cards and other cashless payment methods when paying in shops, while 22% preferred cash and 23% expressed no clear preference. Consumers also identified speed and ease of use among the main advantages of card payments. (European Central Bank)
The transaction data reinforce that position. At the point of sale, cards represented 45% of payment value in 2024, making them the leading payment instrument by value, compared with 39% for cash. Mobile apps accounted for 7% of POS payment value. (European Central Bank)
These figures should not be interpreted as a direct measurement of physical-card usage, because payment statistics can distinguish instruments and channels differently. What they demonstrate clearly, however, is that card-based payments continue to play a central role even as mobile payment adoption grows.
From Payment Instrument to Connected Credential
Importantly, the role of the physical card is evolving rather than disappearing. In modern card issuing, the physical credential increasingly forms one component of a broader ecosystem connected to mobile wallets, issuer apps, tokenization platforms, authentication services and real-time card controls.
A consumer may receive an immediately usable digital credential and provision it into a mobile wallet before a physical card reaches their home. Rather than competing experiences, these credentials can be treated as different expressions of the same underlying account relationship.
The opportunity for issuers is therefore not simply to decide between physical and digital. It is to create a coherent credential experience across both.
Why the Physical Card Still Matters
The Physical Card as a Resilience Layer
The physical card can also serve as a valuable resilience layer within the customer journey. A lost or unavailable phone, depleted battery, device replacement or inability to access a preferred wallet can create situations in which an alternative payment credential becomes important.
Maintaining a physical credential alongside digital options gives cardholders another way to access their account and allows issuers to support customers across a broader range of payment environments and circumstances.
There is a sharper edge to this resilience argument. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded nearly $20.9 billion in reported cybercrime losses in the US in 2025, with account-takeover fraud alone responsible for over a quarter of a billion dollars of that total (FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center). As more of daily life, and daily spending, moves onto phones and into apps, the attack surface for digital-only credentials grows with it. A physical card cannot be phished, spoofed by a fake login screen, or hijacked through a SIM-swap on a mobile number, it fails in different, and often simpler, ways.
The broader acceptance environment remains favourable to cards. ECB research into euro-area companies found that 85% of surveyed companies accepted card payments in 2024, second only to cash at 88%. The same research found that security, reliability and ease of handling were among the most important criteria companies considered when deciding which payment methods to accept. (European Central Bank)
Cards Remain Important Across Transaction Values
The persistence of cards is particularly visible as transaction values increase. ECB research found that more than half of POS payments above €50 were card payments in 2024, making cards the most frequently used payment method for transactions above that level. (European Central Bank)
Card usage has also expanded for smaller purchases. For POS payments worth €5 or less, the share made using cards increased from 15% in 2022 to 21% in 2024, while payments using a mobile device increased from 2% to 6%. The ECB notes that easier use of contactless payments is likely to be one factor behind this development. (European Central Bank)
The result is a payments environment in which mobile adoption can increase at the same time that cards remain highly relevant — reinforcing the need for issuers to support multiple ways for customers to access and use their payment credentials.
A Powerful Touchpoint for Brand Differentiation
The physical card also creates an important opportunity for differentiation at a time when many digital payment experiences are becoming increasingly standardized.
Card materials, finishes, colours, personalization and packaging allow issuers to translate their brand into something customers can physically hold and use. For premium, fintech, retail, travel, corporate and loyalty propositions in particular, the card can become a visible expression of membership and brand identity rather than simply a mechanism for initiating a transaction.
This is one area where physical and digital experiences have fundamentally different characteristics. An issuer app can create frequent interaction, while a physical card provides a tangible representation of the relationship between the institution and its customer.
Building a Hybrid Physical and Digital Strategy
Physical Cards as a Trust Anchor
The evolution of consumer payment behaviour has important implications for how payment and identity ecosystems are designed.
Rather than approaching physical and digital issuance as separate propositions, issuers can increasingly adopt a hybrid strategy in which the two experiences are interoperable, complementary and customer-centric.
In this model, the physical card can act as a tangible trust anchor — a credential customers can hold and recognize — while digital credentials extend convenience through instant provisioning, mobile wallets, real-time controls and app-based services.
The broader consumer evidence supports the importance of maintaining payment choice. The ECB’s SPACE research shows consumers continuing to use established payment instruments while simultaneously adopting newer digital options, illustrating that payment behaviour is evolving through diversification rather than a simple transition from one instrument to another. (European Central Bank)
This dynamic is no longer confined to payments. Under the EU’s revised eIDAS Regulation, every member state must make an EU Digital Identity Wallet available to its citizens by the end of 2026, a continent-wide effort to give people a verified digital version of documents such as passports, driving licences and national ID cards (European Commission). Tellingly, none of these regulatory programmes propose retiring the physical document. The digital wallet is designed to sit alongside the physical credential, not replace it, the same coexistence model now playing out, transaction by transaction, in how consumers choose to pay.
One Lifecycle, Multiple Credentials
From an issuance perspective, the challenge is therefore increasingly about credential orchestration.
Modern platforms need to connect physical card production and personalization with digital issuance and lifecycle management. This can include:
activation, digital provisioning, tokenization, PIN management, card controls, suspension, replacement, renewal and eventual expiry.
The strongest issuing propositions treat these capabilities as parts of one credential lifecycle, rather than maintaining disconnected physical and digital infrastructures.
For the customer, the distinction should become increasingly invisible. Whether they tap a physical card, use a tokenized version of that credential from a mobile wallet or manage the account through an issuer application, the experience should be consistent.
The Future of Physical Card Issuance
Instant Digital, Physical to Follow
One of the most important developments in modern issuing is the ability to separate credential availability from physical card delivery.
Instead of requiring customers to wait until a card arrives before they can begin using their account, issuers can make a digital credential available immediately and subsequently deliver the physical card.
This changes the role of physical fulfilment. Digital issuance can satisfy the demand for immediacy, while the physical credential provides continued utility, acceptance, resilience and brand presence.
For issuers, the objective is no longer simply to accelerate card production. It is to orchestrate digital and physical issuance so that the customer experiences them as a single journey.
Sustainable Physical Card Issuance
The continued relevance of the physical card also creates a responsibility to reconsider how cards are produced, packaged, distributed and ultimately retired.
For issuers, sustainability can therefore become part of the physical-card strategy through choices around card materials, packaging, fulfilment processes and end-of-life management.
This is particularly important as the industry moves toward a hybrid model. The objective should not simply be to preserve physical issuance, but to make it more efficient and purposeful within a wider credential ecosystem.
From Card Production to Credential Orchestration
Ultimately, the transformation taking place in issuing is larger than the evolution of the card itself.
The traditional model centred heavily on producing, personalizing and delivering a payment card. The emerging model centres on managing a payment credential throughout its lifecycle and across multiple form factors.
The physical card becomes one important manifestation of that credential, alongside mobile wallets, tokens, virtual cards and other digital experiences.
For issuers and technology providers, this changes the strategic question from:
“Physical or digital?”
to:
“How do we give customers the right credential, in the right form, at the right moment?”
The Physical Card as a Customer Experience
Turning the Card into a Brand Experience
At the same time, manufacturers and issuers are responding to evolving consumer expectations through greater customization, differentiated materials, packaging and increasingly sophisticated personalization.
These possibilities extend the role of the physical card beyond its purely utilitarian function. It can become both a payment credential and a brand engagement touchpoint.
This is particularly relevant as issuers seek differentiation in markets where the functional elements of digital payment experiences can look increasingly similar. The physical product gives institutions another surface on which to express brand positioning, membership, exclusivity or personal choice.
Physical and Digital, Better Together
For Identis, the strategic lesson is clear: physical cards remain relevant not because they stand apart from digital transformation, but because their role can evolve within it.
The available evidence shows an increasingly diverse payments landscape. Digital and mobile payments are growing, yet cards remain highly important in consumer preferences and payment value, while card acceptance remains widespread among merchants. (European Central Bank)
The future of issuing is therefore unlikely to be defined simply by replacing physical with digital. Instead, differentiation will increasingly come from the ability to orchestrate physical and digital credentials harmoniously, providing immediacy when customers want it, resilience when they need it and a consistent experience across the entire credential lifecycle.
Perhaps the more interesting question for the industry is not whether physical credentials will survive, but what they are now being asked to prove. A card issued today authenticates a person, a relationship and a brand at the same time, a job no single digital token yet does as completely, and one that will only grow more valuable as verified identity, not just verified payment, becomes the currency issuers are really competing on.
In that environment, the physical card does not disappear. It becomes part of something bigger.