Product or service promotion in social networks is becoming popular and is considered to be an effective marketing tool. The main advantages of this type of promotion are low cost and vast availability. This is determined by the fact that the new generation has new criteria for making decisions which have already settled down as a part of actual modern life.

These criteria rely on personalized services and permanent internet communication. Besides, impression of a service is becoming an important factor in making decisions. Customers satisfied with services provided through social networking are most likely to share the information about this service with friends and acquaintances, and discuss it on a number of information portals. Such a discussion among potential customers will help to propagate information about the quality and usefulness of the service.

Thus, financial and loan institutions need innovative means to attract attention of the so called "Internet generation". To meet these challenges, corporate group "ISBC" has developed hardware and software suite for issuing bank cards with individual design. The service can be available both on the bank's website and in social networks (Face-book, "Vkontakte" i.e. vk.com, "Odnoklass-niki" i.e. odnoklassniki.ru and others).

The suite consists of thermotransfer card printer EDIsecure® XID 8300 and web-application, branded for each bank. Compact design of EDIsecure® printer provides an optimal combination of reliability, performance and efficiency for printing durable and secure plastic cards. Such printers are already widely used in banks to issue small quantities of cards in a short time. Printing capacity of this device is up to 100 cards per hour. Image quality is comparable to offset printing. Card printer XID 8300 can print on both PVC cards and on plastic cards with extended durability made of ABS, PET or PC (polycarbonate). Card feeding tray with security lock for 200 blank cards ensures continious work of the printer. Easy front loading with a removable cartridge simplifies supply of the consumables. The printer can be equipped with magnetic stripe encoder as well as encoder for contact and contactless smart cards. To make cards more secure and to elongate their lifespan, the card printing suite can be extended with lamination module EDIsecure® ILM for single-sided or ILM-DS for double-sided lamination.

The production algorithm of the suite "Individual design of bank cards online" is as follows.

The customer visits on his or her PC an application on the bank's own website or in social network. In this application the customer creates personal design of his or her bank card using images from the template gallery or loading another image. Then the customer fills in a small questionary (including personal data of the cardholder). Finally the application sends the background image of the card alongside with the questionary to the bank server.

The card will be issued in the bank using the card printer EDIsecure® XID 8300 and registered in the bank database. Finally ready-to-use card will be delivered to the customer.

The suite "Individual design of bank cards online" includes:
• thermotransfer card printer EDIsecure® XID 8300;
• software branded according to the corporate style of the bank;
• custom integration of questionary data;
• custom   personal   data   collection  by means of questionary;
• API for integration with IT-system of the customer bank.

Thus, the suite "Individual design of bank cards online" is an effective marketing tool to promote services and products of finance and loan institutions in social networks. This method is the most suitable to cover a wide audience including a number of potential customers of the services. Creating bank cards from applications available in social networks allows to increase brand awareness among potential customers, attract new customers or offer new services to loyal customers. Competition among banks is really strong now, products and services are almost the same, as a consequence any marketing advantage can make the difference.