Datacard Group

The company was established in 1969[11] as Data Card Addressograph after Willis K. Drake acquired a Minnesota based firm that produced credit card imprinters. Data Card focused on the needs of the underserved financial card market. Company founder Willis K. Drake led a team of engineers that invented machines that enabled highly secure and productive personalization of credit cards beyond the simple imprinters that Addressograph had offered.[12][13] Datacard Group's high-volume card issuance systems allowed banks and retailers to personalize 1,500 cards per hour with great precision and security. Until the company launched its technologies, the process was slow and riddled with quality problems.[14][15]

Under new ownership in the early 1990s, the company refined core technologies and expanded into additional markets, including government and enterprise. Shortly after the new owners purchased the company and took it private, development efforts were re-energized and core technologies quickly expanded beyond basic card embossing and magnetic stripe encoding. New inline card personalization technologies included color printing that rivaled lithographic output and encoding of both contact and contactless smart cards.[16][17]

Development efforts led to multiple new offerings, including the world's first digital photo ID card system and desktop card printer in 1994. Until the launch of this new technology, governments, corporations and other security-minded enterprises primarily used cut-and-paste processes that involved laminating color photographs and paper identification cards. The digital systems brought new levels of security and economy to the identification process.[18]

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Data Card Corporation steadily grew revenues by expanding beyond hardware to include software and customized developments introducing driver's licenses, national IDs, traditional passports and e-passports (which elevated document security by incorporating biometrics, laser engraving, digital imaging, data encryption and other technologies). Significant revenue gains were also driven by continued leadership in the financial card market. Through the 1990s, 2000s and today, a vast majority of the world's credit, debit and prepaid cards are personalized using high-volume and desktop issuance systems.[16][18][19]

The company's products include high-volume central card issuance systems, including desktop printers, software and supplies.[8] Other hardware products including high-value systems for issuing passports and creating customized mail packages for cards and other personalized credentials.[15] Software offerings include products for issuing and managing financial cards, EMV smart cards, ID cards, passports, national IDs, student IDs and other credentials.[20][21]

A rapidly growing portion of the company's portfolio is focused on instant issuance of credit, debit and prepaid cards. Banks, retailers, credit unions and other organizations issuing cards used for financial transactions are rapidly deploying systems used to issue cards on-demand in branch or store locations.[22] These instant issuance systems are often used for issuing emergency replacements when cards are lost, stolen or compromised by breaches. Most often, they complement centralized operations that focus on mass issuance aspects of a card program.[18][23]

The company also derives strong revenues from supplies and service. Supply offerings include overlays embedded with a variety of advanced technologies, including optical variable devices (OVDs), holographic images and various advanced materials that improve both the security and longevity of cards, passport booklets and other credentials.[24][25] The company's service organization supports customers in 150 countries with a portfolio of both consultative professional services and technical support, which is available online, on-call or onsite.[26] Service experts are often located onsite at large customer installations and develop highly collaborative relationships with in-house operations teams.[27]

In 2013 the company acquired Entrust, and expanded its portfolio to include Entrust PKI, certificate solutions and software authentication platforms that strengthen security in a wide range of identity and transaction ecosystems.[8][21] The company was renamed Entrust Datacard in 2014.[28] The company acquired nCipher Security, a developer of hardware security modules (HSMs) from Thales in 2019.

On September 14, 2020, the company announced that it has re-branded from Entrust Datacard to Entrust[29] and changed its legal entity name to Entrust Corporation.[30]

The Entrust transaction in December 2013 represents the largest acquisition in the company's history. While a majority of the company's financial and portfolio growth has been organic, there have been several acquisitions in the company's 46-year history.[31]

In 2000, Datacard Group acquired Platform Seven (P7), the smart card technology arm of National Westminster Bank.[32] In 2010, the company also acquired Dynamic Card Systems (DCS) of Denver, Colorado. In addition to engineering and sales teams, the DCS acquisition included the card issuance software, CardWizard.[33] Other acquisitions in recent years have expanded the company's core capabilities surrounding trusted identity and secure transactions including Safelayer and Trustis.

In June 2019 it acquired general-purpose Hardware Security Module vendor nCipher from Thales Group.[34] In January 2021, Entrust acquired HyTrust, Inc., a provider of virtualized and multi-cloud data encryption, key management, and cloud security posture management solutions.[35]

Todd Wilkinson has served as Datacard Group (and now Entrust) president and CEO since June 2008. Previously, he had been the company's CFO for nearly three years and had worked in a number of executive positions at General Electric.[36] Kurt Ishaug is the company's CFO and Lisa Tibbits is general counsel.[37]