Credit Card Memory Sticks – Thin, Thinner, Thinnest.

USB Memory Sticks in the shape of a Credit Card are all the rage at the moment with sales growing week on week. One of the underlying reasons for growth in demand is the increasing thinness of the credit card USB’s. When they were first launched a couple of years ago the credit card flash drives were still a little “chunky” and whilst they were the same width and height of a credit card they were around twice the thickness of a bankcard.

With continued innovation and miniaturisation in the flash chip and flash controller industry its now possible to manufacture USB credit cards that are only 2mm thick which makes them comparable for standard credit cards. These ultra slim cards include a USB flash memory module, a USB flash controller chip and a USB interface to allow the card to be connected to a PC or Mac.

Despite the slim nature of these USB cards there is no compromise on quality or performance and they are available in memory sizes ranging from 512MB all the way up to 16GB.

Unlike traditional USB sticks, which tend to be “rectangular” and attached to a lanyard or key ring the USB credit card memory sticks can be popped into a wallet, bag or purse alongside any other card(s) you might be carrying.

For the companies wanted to buy USB memory sticks printed with their logo, brand(s), web address, contact telephone

numbers etc. the USB cards are perfect. Traditional USB sticks are simply too small to carry much more than a simple logo or brand without reducing the design/text down to a size where they become difficult to read. USB credit cards on the other hand offer plenty of space to print complex design and lots of narrative and still they are still readable. In fact full colour prints across the whole surface of both cards are not only “doable” but also they look fantastic.

The combination of a shape that people are familiar with and are used to carrying around coupled with the ability to print complex images on them has catapulted the USB credit card into the “Top 5” most requested branded USB flash drives.

Although USB credit cards are marginally more expensive than standard models if you pre-load the cards with your sales material, brochures, prices lists, presentation files, media files and so on you can offset a significant chunk of the cost by printing less paper documents (as well as saving the haulage and storage costs of these printed documents)

So, if you are looking for a USB Memory Stick that will comfortably carry a complex logo and look great whilst doing it then you need to add the credit card version to your shortlist.