Payment card personalization is the full name for what the industry usually calls card personalization, and that entry covers the process in detail. This page explains the term and how it is used.
Personalization is the step that turns a blank, mass-produced plastic or metal card into one that belongs to a particular customer and account. A specialist bureau or the issuer's own facility prints or embosses the cardholder's name, card number and expiry date, encodes the magnetic stripe, and writes account data and unique cryptographic keys into the EMV chip. The keys let the chip produce one-time cryptograms that prove a transaction came from a genuine card. The work is done in secure, audited facilities, with keys handled in a hardware security module, because a leak at this stage could allow mass counterfeiting.
The word "payment" is added mainly to separate this from personalising other smart cards, such as identity documents, transport cards or SIM cards, which use similar machines but different data and security rules. In payments, personalization is one stage of card lifecycle management, carried out on behalf of the card issuer before the card is mailed or, with instant issuance, printed in a branch.