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SUNBURY, PA – 2007 – Q-Card, a leading supplier of card testing equipment, announced the launch of a comprehensive plastic card and paper ticket testing facility. The new facility will be called Q-Lab and will be located in the company's Sunbury, PA facilities. The company recently acquired the European card testing lab of MasterCard and moved it to Sunbury to complement its existing testing facility.

Q-Lab will focus on providing services to help customers fix an existing problem, improve existing systems or develop entirely new ticket and plastic card products. “This new laboratory will formalize the services we've been offering for several years,” said Ed Bedell, the company's president and CEO. “We are gratified to see our investment in Q-Card grow into a vital industry service.”

The new lab will provide consulting services to help card manufacturers, personalization bureaus, service bureaus, banks, and transit authorities set up quality testing at their locations or develop new card products. It also will be capable of setting up quality control programs for production cards and tickets at Q-Lab or at customer locations.

Q-Lab is staffed by leaders in the mag strip and plastic card and ticket industry who have dedicated their careers to card products and quality since the invention of the mag stripe card. These individuals have participated in the development of many card technology innovations including ISO standards activity, card security and industry seminars.

Initially, services offered by Q-Card's Q-Lab fall into four categories:

1. Mag Stripe Analysis
   1. Check all mag stripe physical and encoding parameters against ISO
   2. Determine why a mag stripe fails to read or fails to meet ISO or customer specifications
   3. Determine if mag stripe has surface profile problems that are affecting the signal amplitude or jitter
   4. Evaluate raw materials—is the tape supplier providing good mag tape
   5. Determine if mag stripe cards are being exposed to erasing magnetic fields
   6. Analyze mag stripe noise which can lead to the plastic bag solution at POS
   7. Evaluate how mag stripe stands up to physical abuse and abrasion
   8. Certify that mag stripe cards meet all industry requirements
2. Physical Card Testing
   1. Environmental conditions of humidity and temperature
   2. Impact resistance
   3. Card flatness and profiles
   4. Card dimension analysis
   5. Color control and matching
   6. Card layer adhesion
   7. Card flex testing
   8. Conductivity and electrostatic discharge
   9. Vision inspection for mag stripe, logo or chip location, color correctness and other physical attributes
   10. Statistical analysis of all data
   11. Report generation, certification of conclusions and recommended directions
3. Providing Test Card
   1. Amplitude and jitter cards with precise control of encoding parameters
   2. Set of test cards for testing terminals and encoding equipment
   3. Calibration cards for equipment setup and cross-calibration to standards
   4. Cleaning cards
4. Consulting
   1. New card product development
   2. Encoding and reading equipment development or improvements
   3. New card application development
   4. Specifications for new cards production
   5. Design of sampling and quality program for new or existing card products
   6. Testing new card products for security and performance
   7. Patent evaluation and guidance
   8. Establish card quality programs, specifications and procedures
   9. Settle disputes between equipment, card and end users

Q-Lab uses much of the same equipment that is offered for sale through Q-Card including the time-tested Mag3 magnetic stripe analyzer, OptiCheck vision inspection, the statistical software that was created specifically for these applications, and a host of ISO-specified testing equipment and procedures.

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