1 billion and counting: TSYS marks card production milestone

Naturally, having been in business more than 30 years, TSYS has racked up its share of milestones. On Tuesday, the high-tech firm’s card and statement production facility in north Columbus marked yet another major feat — 1 billion credit and debit cards manufactured since 1993.

Colorful balloons and two large cakes behind him, Blake Barker, TSYS senior director of output services, tried to put that mammoth number in some sort of context as he addressed a large number of employees inside the North Center facility just off Moon Road and J.R. Allen Parkway.

“There’s not many people in business that can stand up and say they’ve done a billion of anything,” he said before tossing out the fact that a billion seconds equates to about 31 years. “And if you laid flat a billion cards you would have a six-lane highway from here to Chattanooga.”

With TSYS Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Troy Woods on hand for the moment, Barker explained that card number 1 billion was embossed and shipped out for a customer of New Jersey-based TD Bank, a card-processing client of TSYS since 1979.

“It’s a longtime customer, a longtime goal and milestone for us,” said Barker, who offered up a mini-history lesson explaining how Columbus Bank and Trust issued its first revolving charge card in 1959 and whose first third-party processing client was a St. Petersburg, Fla., bank in 1974. TSYS sprang from CB&T, with the Columbus bank converting its card-processing division into a subsidiary and publicly traded firm in 1983.

“We’ve come a long way, guys, in a relatively short period of time,” Barker, who started at the North Center two decades ago as a print room machine operator, told the staffers gathered in the warehouse portion of the facility.

“Everything that everybody does out here supports that milestone. It takes this group of folks to make that happen. We appreciate everything you do,” he said, pointing out the company didn’t track production numbers from 1991 until 1993.

After the brief ceremony, with employees enjoying cake, signing a banner and picking up a T-shirt for the occasion, Barker said the 1 billion milestone is “huge” in the card business and that it is a critical part of the client-fulfillment pipeline at TSYS, which serves banks, retailers and card-issuing companies.

“Those are personalized cards, with someone’s account number, someone’s name, someone’s expiration date on that card,” he said.

Landy Sanders is one of the employees who operates a card-embossing machine. She has been with TSYS since November 1990 and knows the operation like the back of her hand, having started out in the card vault and worked her way around the facility before ending up in embossing. But don’t ask her how many of the 1 billion cards she personally has made.

“Oh, my God. I have no idea,” she said, laughing.

Asked if she ever thought TSYS would be her employer this long, Sanders responded that it never entered her mind.

“Who realizes almost 25 years ago that they’re going to be with one company?” she asked. “But it’s a great company to work for and we have a lot of good people.”

While it doesn’t have all the glitz and amenities found in the TSYS corporate headquarters in downtown Columbus, the North Center is nonetheless an important piece of the overall operation, just based on the sheer production that goes on inside the facility.

The center, which has a 256,000-square-foot building and another 85,000-square-foot structure on 40 acres, mailed nearly 187 million pieces in 2014, including new plastic cards, billing statements and card offers. That equates to more than 15.5 million pieces each month, making the facility one of the highest-volume mail operations in the Southeast. It even has its own U.S. Postal Service substation.

Barker noted that the North Center typically makes 4 million to 5 million cards a month, depending on the time of year. The biggest month on record came in July 2009, when production surged to 9 million cards, with major clients Bank of America and Green Dot fueling some of that.

TSYS lost a large portion of the Bank of America business a few years ago, but since has regained its consumer portfolio, converting the cards earlier this year to the high-tech TS2 system that was launched in 1994.

“We ebb and flow, so it depends on the volume of work,” Barker said of the production load handled by the 450 to 460 workers at the center, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They sometimes receive additional help from temporary staffing agencies when a large contract such as Bank of America kicks into high gear.

Such a heavy and relentless workload is why pausing for a few minutes on a Tuesday to celebrate 1 billion cards produced was pretty special to Sanders, who has invested nearly a quarter-century of her life into the overall endeavor.

“It’s a big deal because it means we’ve been in business for a long time, and if we keep making these cards, we’re going to be in business a lot longer,” she said. “ So 1 billion ... we hope to get that 2 billion coming up.”

This story was originally published May 5, 2015 at 6:16 PM with the headline "1 billion and counting: TSYS marks card production milestone."