Banksys uses specialty plastic for its payment terminals

Be it at gas stations, restaurants or department stores, where sales used to be rung up on a cash register, all you hear nowadays is the beeping of a card reader. Safeguarding the huge volumes of data in the highly sensitive electronic interior calls for a sturdy exterior as well.

This is why manufacturers of these complex systems have come to rely more and more on high-performance housing materials. This also holds true for the Belgian company Banksys, which uses BASF’s specialty plastic Luran® S for its latest generation of terminals. Luran S is a plastic based on ASA (acrylonitrile/styrene/acrylate) and is part of the specialty product line of BASF’s styrene plastics.

First supplier to turn to an ASA specialty plastic

The material is injection-molded by the Belgian plastics processing companies HDB and Quadrant; Banksys is the first supplier on the market to turn to an ASA specialty plastic for its card reader. “Up until now, we had used a conventional PPE (polyphenyl ether) which we have now replaced with BASF’s ASA, since series of experiments have shown that it is considerably more resistant to chemicals,” explains Olivier Craenen, responsible for the Industrial production of the card reader at Banksys.

Be it at gas stations, car repair shops or department stores, the housing of these devices can be affected by stress cracking or fractures when they come into contact with gasoline, oil or cleansers. Due to its high acrylic ester content, BASF’s specialty plastic Luran S has greater polarity than PPE or conventional standard plastics, thus ensuring greater resistance to aggressive media.

Color Matching

In addition to being resistant to chemicals, this material also meets special requirements in terms of impact resistance and welding properties. If the terminal is opened by force it has to be destroyed.

“A decisive aspect for the use of this BASF plastic, however, was its color constancy,” elaborates Luc Gysels of Market Development for Specialty Plastics at BASF. The key word here is color matching. Even though the device consists of several components made by different processors, the plastic has to retain the same color specification throughout all processing stages.