This picture is from here (A and B letters are irrelevant for this question). A chip-and-pin card like Visa Electron has a contact pad like this on its face side:

Underneath the contact pad is the chip which has electrical connection with the contact pad. The pictures I found so far suggest that it's a single module - the chip is mechanically united with the contact pad and is then installed into a plastic card.

The contact pad is perhaps ten millimeter wide and ten millimeters long and so much larger than the chip surface. When a card is being bent the contact pad also bends and this most likely causes the chip casing to bend which causes mechanical stress of the chip. Mechanically stressing a chip doesn't sound like a good idea.

How is this problem addressed? Does merging a large contact pad with a smaller chip into a single module make the whole assembly more reliable or more fault-prone?

This picture is from here (A and B letters are irrelevant for this question). A chip-and-pin card like Visa Electron has a contact pad like this on its face side:

Underneath the contact pad is the chip which has electrical connection with the contact pad. The pictures I found so far suggest that it's a single module - the chip is mechanically united with the contact pad and is then installed into a plastic card.

The contact pad is perhaps ten millimeter wide and ten millimeters long and so much larger than the chip surface. When a card is being bent the contact pad also bends and this most likely causes the chip casing to bend which causes mechanical stress of the chip. Mechanically stressing a chip doesn't sound like a good idea.

How is this problem addressed? Does merging a large contact pad with a smaller chip into a single module make the whole assembly more reliable or more fault-prone?