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The badge reel, also known as a zip or yoyo, is a highly practical accessory for keeping your badge or card close to hand at all times. You can wear your badge on your belt and use it whenever you need to without having to unhook it, thanks to the retractable cord. We have a wide range of badge reels that you can customise online, using our online customisation tool.

You must have already seen wristbands at music festivals and other events, fitted with a chip that allows you to open doors or pay for things. These wristbands actually contain an RFID chip that offers a range of functions, perfect for organisers of festivals and other events.

Name badges have become an integral part of a company's branding. We offer you quality badges so that your employees can make a good impression on your customers. The name badge is often one of the first points of contact for your brand. These badges serve several purposes: they identify your staff, improve customer relations and disseminate your brand image, to name just a few.

We offer you a wide assortment of high quality badges to meet your needs. Whether permanent, reusable or even eco-friendly badges, we have what you need!

The silicone wristband is growing in popularity and is now the first choice for events! This rubber wristband appeals to all ages. It's light, ultra-resistant, reusable and can be customised any way you want. The silicone wristband has a wide range of uses - as a fashion accessory, promotional item or identification wristband.

Why choose a customised silicone wristband? Read this article to find out more about the ultra-trendy silicone event wristband!

Do you need a customised lanyard for your company or for an event? Our customisation tool lets you customise your lanyard in the blink of an eye. This might be for your employees or for a specific event such as a trade fair, conference, open day for customers or for staff. PDC offers several models of lanyard and a range of customisation options.

These days, lanyards are an essential feature of corporate communications. An advertising or professional lanyard must be effective and convey the message you want. Depending on your use, you'll need to select a model, decide whether to customise it or not, choose a specific material, add a fastener or specific options, or combine it with specific accessories.

When you're organising an event, an ID wristband is always a good idea! With an ID wristband you can identify and check who’s taking part in your event at a glance, plus it’s a great way of creating customer loyalty, as some people like to keep it as a souvenir after the event. The customised ID wristband can be used for all types of events: festivals, concerts, private parties, exhibitions, sports competitions, nightclubs, hospitals, theme parks, all-inclusive hotels, campsites and many other places. Depending on your use, you'll need a wristband that's more or less resistant, customised or neutral, single-use or reusable.Not sure which wristband to choose? Check out our guide!

Royal Mail Communication:

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called on its members who collect, sort and deliver parcels and letters to take strike action on 26 and 31 August and the 8 and 9 September 2022.

We’re really sorry for the disruption that this strike action is likely to cause to you. We want to reassure you we will do everything we can to minimise disruption and get our services back to normal as quickly as possible.

Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, but they cannot fully replace the daily efforts of its frontline workforce. We will be doing what we can to keep services running, but customers should expect significant disruption.

How does it affect your PDC delivery?

PDC UK is reliant on Royal Mail for the majority of the parcels sent out every day. You can therefore expect disruption and extension of delivery capability during and immediately after those strike days. Royal Mail should provide further details and updates in the following days. Here is their official communication page.

For the last few years, the UK factory of PDC EMEA has been a part of the Made in Britain (MiB) association. MiB is a growing community of Britain’s manufacturers applying protected, collective marks to products, packaging, websites and social media. By joining, PDC EMEA made it clear to consumers that their name badge products are manufactured in Britain to the very highest standards.

Due to the UK government's mandate for every business to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, MiB initiated the Green Growth Programme to help businesses advance their progress towards being more sustainable. The program provides businesses with a benchmark to understand where they rank amongst their peers, where there is a need for improvement and where they excel and can aid others in the community. As an MiB member, PDC EMEA was invited to take the specifically designed Green Growth survey to see where they ranked among other members.

PDC EMEA demonstrated its sustainability initiatives through its eco-friendly products, such as name badges made from sustainable and recyclable materials. They have also been looking into environmentally friendly solutions for their packaging and reviewing their manufacturing processes to make them more efficient. All this combined with PDC EMEA’s high scores in governance, customer engagement and accreditations, helped them rank in the top 25 percent of companies who took the survey.

Learn more our eco-friendly processes

By completing the Green Growth Survey, the PDC EMEA's factory in the UK has progressed its sustainability journey and joined a cohor of more sustainable, resilient and competitive businesses.

“As a global organization, it’s our intention that we, locally as well as globally, create and leave behind a planet that future generations want to and can live on,” said Alexandra Mery, Product Manager, PDC EMEA. “We strive to learn more our eco-friendly processes create a working environment that makes our employees proud, build brands that people want to work and collaborate with and design sustainable products that serve the needs of our customers. Joining the Green Growth Programme was a great way to assess our progress and show our commitment to making our products and our processes more sustainable and contributing toward being net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Discover our eco-friendly people ID solutions

If you've been browsing our catalogue looking for a new ID card holder, chances are you've encountered the term "CardProtector badge holder" at some point. And unless you're as familiar with ID products as we are, you probably had a very basic (but valid) question: “What is it?”

It sounds like it could be one of several things but it’s certainly not just another name for a non-flexible badge holder. CardProtector badge holders serve as a pretty basic solution to a very modern problem.

What is a CardProtector badge holder?

What does a CardProtector badge holder do?

This kind of holder shields the inserted smart card from being read or scanned by card readers thanks to a specific metal insert.

Fully understanding this requires a bit of background information on how smart cards work.

Normally, a smart card in a radio-frequency identification (RFID) program works by having an internal chip that interacts with a dedicated card reader.

The card reader contains an antenna that scans for RFID chips. When the scanning antenna picks up a chip, it takes the data from that chip and sends it back to a receiver that translates the data for use in payment systems, access control systems and more.

The thin piece of metal material that is the major part of a shielded badge holder helps to interrupt this process. The metal material helps to prevent the smart chip from being picked up by the antenna of a smart card reader.

Essentially, the metal protects the chip from the scanning antenna, sending the waves bouncing back and preventing the transmission of any data.

Why would you want to block an RFID card from being scanned?

It seems kind of counterintuitive, doesn't it? After all, the point of RFID cards is for them to be contactless and convenient, to allow for the quick collection of data or granting of access.

However, many of today's RFID cards can contain sensitive data. For example, an employee ID smart card used at a large corporation may contain information like the cardholder's name, title and security clearance. Even if the face of the card just features a name and a photo, a wealth of data may exist on the chip beneath the surface.

The data exists on the card so the system can use it to verify access, which is a great use of an RFID smart card; however, it isn't data you'd want out there for public consumption.

Contactless payment with credit cards is becoming an increasingly popular method of payment as well. Some of these cards use similar technology to that referenced above, potentially leaving a card vulnerable to unauthorized data access by anyone with a rogue reader.

Are people actually being victimized by this kind of data theft?

The short answer is "yes," but the extent of the damage being done is unclear. Various reports and articles have shown that it is, in fact, possible for a data thief armed with the right card reader to pick up information off of a smart card or chip-containing credit card. This kind of data theft is known as skimming, a type of identity theft mainly focused on acquiring user data.

Many credit card companies have taken steps to make the kind of information that can be gleaned from skimming essentially useless. For example, some cards issue a one-time PIN for each transaction, while others ensure that no card numbers, CVVs or names are transmitted via RFID.

However, corporations, government offices and other organizations using RFID-based smart cards may not have taken the same steps, potentially leaving their user data vulnerable. Such vulnerabilities would be particularly troubling for high-security organizations or government offices dealing in classified data or intelligence.

How can I protect a smart card from data skimming?

The simplest method, as this post has hopefully made clear, is to use a CardProtector badge holder.

As mentioned above, shielded badge holders contain thin layers of metal that prevent the card from being read by a scanning antenna. In the event that a data thief held a reader to your smart card, the shielded badge holder would prevent it from being read.

Shielded badge holders come with the added benefit of looking just like regular badge holders. They're available in several styles, including open-face and multi-card.

When using a CardProtector holder, you can have your card scanned for legitimate purposes by simply removing it from the holder and passing by a reader. This functionality makes shielded badge holders a great way to prevent data theft without rendering your card unusable in the process.

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