Commercial card producer, Plastic Card Services (PCS), has retained its contract to produce Slimming World’s membership card.
Slimming World has a total of 400,000 members who regularly attend sessions at more than 7,750 groups across the UK. The ‘smart‘ membership card is given to every Slimming World member when they join a group. It is unique to each individual, and includes a chip containing personal information, weight data and a record of attendance.
The Slimming World card, which is the same size as a traditional credit card, stores information securely so that the club’s Consultants have instant access to a member’s records and details such as their weight loss history, any special offers purchased and planned holidays. It allows members to attend any group in the UK to weigh-in and get weekly advice and support, providing consistent service to members who travel with work and holiday in the UK.
The card’s pin number also allows slimmers to access to Slimming World’s free members-only website ‘LifelineOnline’, where they can get support, ideas, recipes and guidance between weekly groups.
John Pusey, Slimming World General Manager, said: “The card provides all the information that our Consultants need to help their members in one place and helps give added value and business efficiency. It was a key part of Slimming World’s move from a paper-based system to a fully electronic pay and weigh system, which was developed in-house to improve the efficiency of our groups and the service we provide to our members. We worked closely with PCS to define the type of chip the membership card needed.”
Smart card technology is rising in popularity due to its versatility and robustness, and the global smart card market has witnessed continuous growth during the past few years. Smart cards have the ability to easily manage, store, protect and provide access to highly secure data.
Rob Nicholls, PCS Managing Director said: “The smart card is perfect for an organisation such as Slimming World as it provides it with an ideal platform for the safe management of cardholder’s details, and much more flexibility compared to traditional methods of record keeping and data management. There has been a wave of technical developments during the past few years, which has led to the diversification of smart card applications. We look forward to continuing to work with Slimming World and helping them to develop the product further in the future.”
