What is the difference between a kanban card vs Jira Issue?

A kanban card on an EasyKAD™ kanban board is a visual placeholder that represent the collection fields that form a Jira Issue.  When you click on the card, it opens the Jira Issue with its various fields on an electronic form.

Jira began as a IT help desk ticketing system.  So a ticket or Issue was the collection of fields that defined a case or issue.  As Jira progressed from IT operations into software development, different types of ‘Issues’ and the fields within them could be customised, but the legacy name of Issue has remained.

EasyKAD™ re-uses the term card as it is internationally recognised as an integral physical piece of a kanban system. The scheduling system using cards originated from Toyota a few decades ago, long before any Atlassian software was created.

Now days, many other functional areas of an organisation outside the Information Technology department use kanban boards in Jira.  The kanban card and its associated Jira ‘Issue’ can be customised to represent any work item for a non-IT team.