Instead of cartridges of ink, ID card printers use ribbon with color panels to print cards. These color panels are mademagicard-lc1 up of Yellow (Y), Magenta (M), Cyan (C), Black (K), and usually a clear overlay panel (O) to help protect against UV fading from sunlight and wear and tear from handling the ID card after printing. You may know these as YMCKO ribbons or YMCKOK ribbons. The extra K in the YMCKOK ribbon is ONLY for dual sided printing when the back of the card has only black text. Using the YMCKOK ribbon when appropriate will cut your cost per print by not requiring the printer to waste the YMCKO panels on the second pass just to use another K panel for the back side of the card.

Monochrome ribbons are also available for single color printing with colors such as black, white, red, blue, green, gold, silver and more.

Most manufacturers list the shelf-life of a printer ribbon as 1-2 years, but if stored properly in a cool, dark place, can last much longer.