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by tialaramex 1599 days ago
In the UK my current debit card for my good bank is a flat black rectangle with the Mastercard Logo (overlapping circles) the name of the bank, the chip connector, and an arrow (for those with reasonable vision to determine correct orientation if they've never seen a chip before). From a Tactile point of view it has an indentation (orientation again) and a single Braille-like bump signifying "This is your debit card" (other cards may have more bumps).

On the back though it has a lot of details about the account, who I am, validity and so on, so all the same data is on the card, just not on the front and not embossed.

Current era bank cards aren't bright enough to change their numbers though, many of them are scarcely "smarter" than they were when they were completely passive, just barely enough going on to make it trickier to counterfeit them, not really any attempt to actually make that truly impossible for the majority of banks and customers. From the bank's point of view if they spend $5 per card to avoid $3 per card of fraud, they wasted $2 per card, and if half that fraud lands on the customer (because Mrs Smith didn't notice or the bank successfully prevented her claiming her money back and blamed her for the loss instead) they wasted $3.50.