Most promotional scratch cards die before anyone wins anything. The coating flakes off in the courier box, the prize ghosts through under a phone torch, or the reveal layer smudges into grey mush the second a fingernail touches it. None of that is bad luck. It's bad print spec, and every bit of it is preventable before your artwork goes anywhere near a press.
Scratch cards are one of the few promo products with a built-in moment of suspense, which is exactly why they work at trade shows, in loyalty mailers and stapled to invoices. But that suspense only lands if the scratch panel behaves. Here's what actually determines whether yours will.
Five coating types cover almost every promotional scratch card produced in Australia: silver latex ink, UV scratch-off varnish, pre-made scratch-off labels, hot-stamp scratch foil, and water-based scratch coatings. Each one scratches differently, hides the prize differently, and copes with transport differently.
| Coating type | Finish | Opacity | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver latex ink | Matte metallic grey | Strong with two coats | Standard card runs, the classic lotto-style look |
| UV scratch-off varnish | Crisp, printable in colours | Good, with sharp panel edges | Branded panel shapes, logos printed over the scratch area |
| Scratch-off labels | Foil sticker applied over print | Excellent | Variable data, unique codes, shorter runs |
| Hot-stamp scratch foil | Shiny metallic (gold, silver, holographic) | Excellent | Higher-end cards where the panel itself needs to look good |
| Water-based coatings | Matte, low odour | Moderate, often needs extra passes | Jobs with strict VOC or indoor-air requirements |
Silver latex is the workhorse and it earns the job most of the time. It rubs off cleanly, takes overprinting (so you can put "scratch here" text or your logo on the panel itself), and it's forgiving on cost. UV scratch-off varnish wins when you want the panel in a brand colour or an unusual shape, because it holds a clean edge where latex can look slightly soft.
Scratch-off labels get overlooked and shouldn't be. If your campaign uses unique codes, printing the variable data digitally and then applying a foil label over each code is often cleaner than trying to run latex over 5,000 different prize lines. The label's adhesive edge also acts as a seal, which matters in humid weather. More on that in a second.
Humidity softens latex-based scratch coatings, and in sustained humid conditions the panel can turn gummy, stick to sleeves or neighbouring cards, and smear instead of flaking away cleanly. A card that scratched beautifully in a Melbourne print room can behave very differently after a week in a Brisbane storeroom in February, or sitting in a rep's car in Darwin.
The flip side is dry heat. Leave latex-coated cards baking in a ute dashboard through a Perth summer and the coating can go brittle, cracking off along the edges before anyone's scratched a thing. Scratch panels are essentially a thin rubber layer. Rubber doesn't love extremes in either direction.
Practical steps that protect your panels:
One thing we see regularly: a client orders scratch cards in autumn for a campaign that doesn't launch until January, then stores the cartons in a tin shed. The cards were fine when they arrived. The shed did the damage. Treat scratch cards like chocolate, not like flyers.
The card stock under the coating matters as much as the coating itself. For promotional scratch cards, a coated art board of around 300gsm to 350gsm with a release varnish over the prize area is the standard spec, and there's a reason for every part of that sentence.
The release varnish is the unsung hero. It's a clear layer printed between the prize artwork and the scratch coating, and it's what lets the latex lift off without tearing the print underneath. Skip it, or print on uncoated stock that drinks the latex in, and the coating bonds to the card. The winner scratches and scratches and ends up gouging through their own prize. We've seen cards arrive from elsewhere with exactly this fault, and there's no fixing it after the fact. The whole run is scrap.
Stock weight matters for handling. A 300gsm+ board stays flat through the mail, survives being shoved in a wallet, and gives the scratch action something solid to push against. Flimsy stock flexes under the fingernail and the coating cracks in sheets instead of rubbing off. For cards that need to live in a wallet for weeks, a laminated finish or a plastic card body is worth the step up.
Watch panel placement too. A scratch area running over a fold, a perforation or within a few millimetres of the card edge is asking for the coating to lift in transit. Keep the panel on flat, central real estate.
Two coats of scratch-off latex is the sweet spot for most promotional scratch cards. One coat risks the prize showing through under strong light, and a phone torch held behind the card is the first thing a curious punter tries. Three or more coats makes the panel genuinely hard to clear with a fingernail, leaving rubbery residue and a frustrated customer who gives up halfway.
Opacity also depends on what's underneath. Heavy black prize text under a thin coating is the classic ghosting fail, because dark ink shows through where lighter colours wouldn't. If your reveal uses bold dark type, say so upfront. The fix might be an extra coating pass, a blocking layer under the panel, or simply reworking the prize text in a mid-tone colour. All cheap to solve before printing. Expensive after.
Before signing off on a full production run, test a physical sample against this checklist. Ten minutes here protects the entire campaign.
That last one trips people up more than the printing does. Games of chance run as promotions in Australia can require a trade promotion permit depending on the state or territory and the prize pool, with NSW and the ACT being the strictest. Sort the permit before you lock the artwork, because permit numbers often need to appear on the card itself.
A few patterns come up again and again on scratch card orders:
Every one of these is a five-minute conversation at the briefing stage. Have it early.
A promotional scratch card is a printed card with a hidden message, prize or code concealed under a scratch-off coating, used by businesses to run giveaways, loyalty rewards or event activations. Unlike lottery scratchies, they're a marketing tool branded with your logo and your prizes, not a gambling product sold at retail.
If your scratch card promotion involves chance, you may need a trade promotion permit depending on the state or territory and the total prize value, with NSW and the ACT having the most detailed requirements. Check the rules for every state where entries will be accepted before you print, because permit numbers often need to appear on the card.
Yes, a properly specced scratch card clears with a fingernail in a few strokes. If a card needs a coin and real effort, the coating is too thick or the release varnish was skipped, and that's a production fault worth rejecting at the sample stage.
Custom scratch cards are produced to minimum quantities because each job involves plate or screen setup, coating passes and colour matching that can't be done economically one card at a time. In practice the quantities suit scratch card campaigns well, since the format works best spread across mailers, event handouts, receipts and counter displays rather than trickled out a handful at a time.
Allow a few weeks from artwork approval for most custom scratch card runs, longer if the job includes variable data, unique codes or a pre-production sample round. Build buffer into your campaign dates so a sample revision doesn't push your launch.
Smudging happens when the prize layer is printed with inks that haven't properly cured or sealed before the scratch coating goes on, so the fingernail that removes the panel also drags the print. A release varnish over fully cured print prevents it, which is why the thumb-rub test belongs on every sample check.
A scratch card campaign lives or dies on a coating a fraction of a millimetre thick. Get the coating type, substrate and thickness right and you've got one of the most engaging branded handouts going. Get it wrong and you've got a box of expensive confetti.
Promo Punks handles the full spec conversation, from coating choice and panel placement through to samples you can run the torch test on before committing. Send us your campaign idea and your artwork, and we'll sort the rest, including the awkward questions about ghosting black text before they cost you a reprint. Get in touch at promopunks.com.au and let's get your brand under that silver panel.
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