USB flash drives are designed to be small and portable. With the small footprint comes similarly small imprint areas for logos and text. It’s often challenging to effectively display your brand or a slogan to your clients on these useful gadgets.
The credit card USB flash drives take portable to a different dimension. Instead of being just small; they are super thin. Just like a credit card or a business card. No matter what you call it, these cards are super useful for large logos, full color prints, and portability.
Canvas for Maximum Creativity
Want to use the card USB flash drive as a business card? No problem. Print your logo in front, and your contact information either with your logo or on the back of the card. Have a photo that you want to print? We can print full color with full coverage.
Photo of the actual USB flash drive Style Card V2
There is no need to look closely to see where the USB flash drive connector is. This model easily flips open to reveal the connector.
Photo of the USB flash drive Style Card V2 with Opened Connector
We Provide the Canvas, All You Need to Provide is Creativity
These cards are empty canvases. What you print on them is up to you. No matter what you print on them, one thing is certain. Your clients will be impressed to see your creativity revealed in all its glory. That’s before you mention – It’s also a USB flash drive!
There is no lack of imagination in the creative circles of the flash drive designers. The shapes of the drives range from the simple rectangles, keys, pens, and bracelets to animals, bottles, severed thumbs and sex toys. Thus, it is a surprise that the simple looking card shape is difficult to categorize.
Due to the obvious limitation of not possessing a magnetic strip or any other identifying information regularly found on a typical credit card, we initially named it a business card. Logically, one can imprint the company information on the card and add data that may be helpful in communicating the company’s products and services. It’s a common sense replacement for the business card.
We don’t always use logic in the same way; some see a plastic rectangle resembling the shape and feel of the credit card, and call it as such – a credit card drive.
It’s all about the design
Call it what you like, a credit card or a business card; it all boils down to several simple designs.
I tend to prefer the flip type design above others. The card on the photos has a flip connector. It’s easy to connect into a USB port due to a sufficiently long USB plug that is hinged closely to the edge. It’s also easy to store in the wallet due to the extra slim profile.
There are generally 3 different types of the USB card drive designs. The rotating connector, the sliding connector, and the flip connector type.
The Rotating connector is our Card V2 drive made of plastic. The USB connector rotates out for plug-in and rotates back in for storage.
The Sliding connector is our Metal Card drive. The USB connector slides out for plug-in and slides back in for storage. It’s our only card that is available in aluminum or stainless steel.
The Flip connector is our Card V1 drive made of plastic. The USB connector flips out for plug-in and inserted into the cavity into the card for storage.
Long USB connector of the Card V1
Comparison against other card styles
The flip connector style has certain advantages over the other connector types.
Advantages of the Flip style connector card
The card is slightly thinner. The reason it can be thinner is the small cavity within the card that stores the USB connector. The card is thin with the exception of a slightly thicker connector storage area. This is an advantage when you want to store the card in the trifold wallet. It fits just as easily as a credit card.
As already mentioned, the USB connector is longer than on the other styles, thus is an advantage when it needs to be plugged into the USB port.
Disadvantages of the Flip style connector card
Since the USB connector on the card is stored in the cavity, it is slightly harder to detach it from the card. There is only about a half of an inch of leverage on the back of the card to flip the connector out.
The ridged piece of the connector is visible on the back. About one half of an inch; it’s the minimum needed to flip the connector out of the card.
Conclusion
It really does not matter what you call it – a USB credit card flash drive or a USB business card flash drive. What is important is the high portability of the drive due to its slim shape, the ease of use with slim USB connectors, and very large imprint area for your logos and text.
I’m leaning towards the flip style card because of its longer connector and slimmer profile. One point gets deducted for the difficulty in flipping the USB connector from the card. Highly recommended: 4/5 points.
I smile when I recall the exchange of contact information via IR synch with Palm Pilots and Handspring PDAs. The good old business card did not cut it anymore; without a synching PDA you were not in synch with the progressive and technologically savvy professionals.
Even though it may have looked silly, it was a handy feature that enabled a speedy exchange of contact information. Rather than rely on manual methods for storing or inputting the data into the device, now it can be done in a snap. Come to think of it, our extremely powerful smartphones lack that kind of simple feature.
Interestingly, the PDA revolution did not really eliminate or significantly diminish the paper business card. Quite the opposite; the PDAs caused the business card market to offer increasingly luxurious and unique print business cards. It remains true that a great looking card can impress and can make your introduction much more effective.
Naturally, we need a way to combine a business card with the ability to store data in it for the promotional purposes. When an introduction is made, one should be able to provide contact information along with catalogs, presentations, forms, music, videos, or anything else digital. “Impossible!” you say? Oh.. it is possible and there are numerous options available.
The USB business card fits into your standard wallet and is the size of two credit cards put together. Take a look here:
This is only a single model of the USB card with a rotating USB connector. It can hold anywhere from 64MB to 16GB. Full color printing and silk screen printing methods can be used as well as full coverage printing to cover the entire card (front and back). Metal alloy cards of the business card size are also available, and are super cool for creating the ultimate impression. If you care to check out more models and details, check out our website.
The USB card is compact, and with an easy flip can connect to a computer’s USB port. Print all your business relevant information front and back, and load it with any data you want your clients to see. You will not only impress on introduction, your potential and current clients will continue using it for accessing your data and storing theirs.
