Rolex New Warranty Card 2020 Guide [Rolex NFC Warranty Card]

New Rolex Warranty Card 2020

In recent times, speculations about a new Rolex warranty card type have circulated. It perhaps doesn’t come as a surprise since it was many years since Rolex made any update to the card.

At the same time, other Swiss watch manufacturers have made huge progress in their warranty card technology, not to mention Hublot’s Hublotista program with an electronically activated warranty. IWC with its own extended warranty program which is activated online, and so on. 

With that said, the fact that Rolex didn’t have some type of online warranty program for customers meant that the company was lagging behind the industry. Of course, Rolex warranties have been activated electronically at the authorized Rolex retailer, but customers have had no way to check information about the watch and its warranty online. Only Rolex themselves have had access to this information.

The Rolex warranty cards, starting in 2015 have included the following:

• Name of the authorized retailer (pre-printed by Rolex)
• Space for the date of sale
• LC (Land code) – indicating the country of the official retailer
• Space for the name of the purchaser
• Reference number (model number
• Serial number
• And in some cases, more specific details about the watch such as the dial or bracelet type

In recent years, Rolex has been stricter about enforcing that authorized retailers do not leave the cards blank – in particular the name. Instead, if the buyer didn’t want their name written on the card, Rolex allowed the retailer to write ”XXX” instead. But this has come to change with the most recent update to the Rolex warranty.

There were two primary concerns with the old Rolex warranty card. The first is the name written on the card, which, essentially serves no purpose other than making the buyer’s experience more personal. The other is that, for various reasons, owners could lose their warranty cards, which would mean losing out on the warranty (if lost within the 5-year warranty period, as the card is required for any warranty claims).

Rolex took these issues into consideration and has now released its latest generation warranty card.

New Rolex warranty card 2020

So what does the new Rolex warranty card mean? And what changes and updates will it involve?

The new warranty cards contain the following information:

• Model (reference number)
• Serial number (unique watch number)
• Date of purchase – written by the official Rolex retailer at the point of sale

 What is most interesting is that the new Rolex warranty cards do not have:

• Land code
• Name of purchaser

Note that this is an early 2020 rollout of the new warranty cards. As such, depending on a number of different factors, many Rolex watches will still be sold with the previous generation warranty card, whereas some watches will be sold with the new warranty cards. As such, for 2020 Rolex watches (and who knows for how long) there will be the old and the new warranty cards sold side-by-side.

This depends on how Rolex decides to implement the new warranty cards. And there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered here (like always with Rolex). Will Rolex send out new warranty cards for the watches that official Rolex retailers currently have in stock? Will all new watches coming from Rolex be accompanied by the new warranty card? Will Rolex continue to send out both the new and the old warranty cards?

There are both benefits and negatives to the new 2020 Rolex warranty cards. As the new cards have not widely been rolled out yet, the information about them is currently limited. More information will follow, and this article will be updated frequently as soon as more detailed information becomes available. But what we do know is that they are digital. The previous generation was also digital but activated at the official retailer, and detailed information about the watch was only available to Rolex themselves. This may change with the new warranty card.

Warranty and service

Some discussions have highlighted that when the card is registered and the buyer is in the Rolex system, you may not need the physical warranty card in order to take advantage of the five-year warranty that Rolex offers. But this is not the case. Note: the warranty is still, as before, connected to the watch and not a person. You still need the warranty card for any type of service errands.

Selling your watch

Another interesting thing about the new warranty card is what effect it may have if you want to sell your watch. Some people have speculated that if the warranty is connected to a person, will you be able to sell the watch? But as mentioned, the warranty card is not connected to a person, and therefore, there is no difference compared to the previous warranty card. At the point of sale, the authorised retailer activates the warranty with their phone using a dedicated application and by holding (blipping) the card against the phone. A very simple and convenient process.

No name on the card

There are several potential reasons that made Rolex decide to remove the buyer’s name on the card. One of the theories is that it has to do with privacy and potential GDPR reasons. It also makes the warranty activation process even easier for the official retailer as the only thing they have to write on the warranty card is the date.

In addition, the name on the previous warranty card served no actual purpose other than to personalize the buying experience.

Everything you need to know about the new Rolex warranty card

We have done plenty of digging to find out everything there is to know about the new Rolex warranty card and how it works.

To develop this card, Rolex partnered with Mastercard to get help with their expertise and know-how. The new Rolex card has several chips inside and is made in a similar way as a Mastercard card.

Then, of course, at the point of sale, the official Rolex retailer needs to activate it, and how do they do this? Well, it turns out, Rolex has also partnered with Apple to have them develop a phone specially for activating the Rolex warranty. This phone comes pre-programmed and locked with limited functions as it is only meant to be used for activating the warranty. Rolex has provided every single official retailer with such an iPhone. If a retailer has an issue with this phone, they must send it back to Rolex.

The activation process of the warranty is simple. The official retailer simply holds the card against the screen, or “sweeps” it over the screen, and then the screen will indicate when it has been successfully activated. This answers many questions regarding the way this card would be executed because with that said, the retailer does not enter any customer information but rather only activates the warranty.