Physical identification solutions for businesses: which one is right for your size and sector?

An ID card is not just a piece of plastic with a photo. It’s the first point of contact between a person and an organization. It’s proof that someone belongs, has access, and exists within a system.

And yet, many companies in Latin America continue to manage their identification processes with slow, expensive, or outdated methods: spreadsheets, external providers with delivery times of weeks, and credentials without any layer of security.

The problem isn’t identification itself. It’s that most organizations don’t know that solutions exist today that are precisely tailored to their size, sector, and issuance volume.

What’s under the ID card

Issuing a physical ID goes far beyond simply printing a name and photo. A well-implemented solution allows for:

• Control access to facilities in an automated way.
• Integrate the credential with HR, payroll, or CRM systems.
• Protect sensitive data of employees, students or affiliates.
• Issue and revoke credentials in real time, from any location.
• Apply physical security layers: holograms, microtext, lamination, chip.

That’s what lies beneath the surface. And that’s precisely what differentiates a robust identification solution from simply “printing ID cards.”

Which solution fits your organization?

Small and medium-sized enterprises

A small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) needs agility and autonomy. It makes no sense to depend on an external provider every time a new employee joins or a credential needs to be replaced.

For this profile, the ideal solution is a compact ID card printer — such as the Evolis Badgy or Zenius lines — combined with local or cloud-based software that allows data capture, credential design, and instant issuance.

What you gain: speed, operational independence, predictable costs, and hassle-free technical support.

Ideal for: companies with 20 to 300 employees, shops, small clinics, cooperatives.

Educational institutions

Universities, colleges, and training centers have a particular dynamic: high user turnover (new students every semester), need for personalized identifications, and, in many cases, integration with systems for accessing libraries, laboratories, or transportation.

The solution here combines agile and decentralized issuance with customizable design by faculty, program or campus.

What you gain: faster registration processes, reduced queues, credentials that go beyond the physical ID card.

Ideal for: universities, colleges, technical institutes, language centers.

Vecard, Intexus’ digital identification solution, is already present in more than 10 universities in Colombia as a complement to the physical credential.

Large companies and corporations

A company with multiple locations, hundreds or thousands of employees, and operations in different countries needs something completely different: scalability, advanced security, and centralized control.

In this case, the ideal solution is CaaS ID (Card as a Service for ID), where Intexus manages the entire issuance process—from data capture to credential delivery—as a managed service. The company doesn’t need its own infrastructure or have to worry about supplies or maintenance.

For high-volume operations with in-house issuance, the Evolis or Sigma printers offer speeds of up to 250 credentials per hour, integration with corporate systems, and multiple physical and digital security options.

What you gain: operational efficiency at scale, advanced security, integration with existing systems, centralized and decentralized management according to the organization’s structure.

Ideal for: business groups, multinationals, financial institutions, government agencies.

Use cases by sector

Government and public entities

Public bodies require the highest standards of document security. Credentials must be difficult to forge, traceable, and compatible with official databases.

Intexus has a proven track record in this field: it has issued more than 2 million identification documents for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and more than 65,000 driver’s licenses per month in the country.

Technologies applied: chip, magnetic stripe, holograms, PKI, integration with national databases.

Health sector

In hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers, staff identification is a matter of operational safety. Knowing who is inside a facility, what access they have, and when they entered is not just a good practice: in many cases, it’s a regulatory requirement.

Physical identification solutions in healthcare must be quick to issue, durable, and capable of integrating with access control systems.

Retail, services and production

In industrial and commercial environments, the identification of personnel and suppliers is key to ensuring the safety of facilities and the traceability of processes.

A scalable solution allows issuing credentials for temporary contractors, differentiating access levels by area, and controlling entry without relying on manual processes.

Aviation and higher education

Two sectors that share a need: high user turnover and non-negotiable security requirements.
In aviation, ground staff credentials must meet international standards and be updated frequently. In education, a student’s ID becomes their key to accessing services, loans, transportation, and more.

Support is part of the solution

One of the most frequent questions we receive is: “Do I need my own infrastructure to issue ID cards?”
The answer is not necessarily. With CaaS ID, Intexus handles the entire process. And if your organization prefers to maintain in-house control, our team will guide you from the initial assessment through implementation and ongoing support.

At Intexus, we have been helping organizations of all sizes—from small businesses to governments throughout Latin America—to identify their people securely, efficiently, and without complications for over 27 years.