An improved card design and manufacturing method to produce thin gage, open loop system cards, such as credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, financial cards, and payroll cards. The thin gage card structure may vary between 5-15 mils in thickness (0.005″ inches to 0.015″ inches) on a one ply plastic material such as PVC or polyester. The majority of manufacturing steps can be performed on a rotary press in a single operation. Card personalization will be accomplished on a high-speed machine using ink jet for all variable information imaged on both the front and back, and accompanied by high speed encoding of magnetic stripe or activation of integrated circuit elements utilized in the electronic payment process.