A magnetic stripe is the black or brown stripe that you see on your credit card, or maybe the back of your airline ticket or transit card. The stripe is made up of tiny magnetic particles in a resin. The particles are either applied directly to the card or made into a stripe on a plastic backing which is applied to the card. The material used to make the particles defines the Coercivity (see below) of the stripe.

The e-card does not bear the magnetic stripe because it was designed only for Internet and other purchases where physical presentment of the card is not required and for security it cannot be misused at POS machines or ATM machines by anyone.

Track 1 is the first magnetic track on a financial transactional card. It is read-only and recorded at 8.3 bpmm (contents are defined in ISO 7813).

Almost universally, track two will hold the card number, and where used, the card expiry date. What's on the other tracks, if there's anything at all, is totally up to the manufacturer.

Bring your card to Campus Card Services. If we determine that the card is damaged or worn through normal usage, there will be no charge for a replacement. However, there will be a $5 charge if damage is the fault of the cardholder.

The end-user defines the requirements for the magnetic stripe including the signal amplitude expected, the coercivity of the stripe, the encoding method and the bit density. The card manufacturer uses the first two points to select the type of magnetic material to use. The system designer is concerned with all four of the parameters. explained above, the stripe is made from many small particles bound together in a resin.

Each character that is encoded on the stripe is made of a number of bits. The polarity of the magnetic particles in the stripe are changed to define each bit. Several schemes exist to determine whether each bit is a one or a zero, the most commonly used schemes are F2F (or Aiken BiPhase) and MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation). The ISO/IEC 7811 standards specify F2F encoding. In this encoding, each bit has the same physical length on the stripe.

Everyone uses magnetic stripes. The most visible use is your bank (credit, debit, and ATM) cards, but these are not the only places. Take a look at your Airline Ticket and Boarding pass (ATB) the next time you travel. Many of these are now including magnetic stripes on the cards. Other places include your phone card, your transit (bus or train) ticket, and even your parking lot ticket.

Yes there are. The most commonly quoted standards are the ISO/IEC 7810, 11, 12 and 13 series of standards. These standards are written for the credit and debit card market and so include information on the embossed characters on the cards as well as the track locations and information on the magnetic stripe. ISO/IEC 7811 has six parts with parts two and six specifically about low and high coercivity magnetic stripes.

It is never acceptable for acquirers, merchants, or service providers to retain magnetic stripe data subsequent to transaction authorization. The Visa & MasterCard Operating Regulations prohibit storage of the contents of the magnetic stripe as a unit. Cardholder name, account number, and expiration date may be retained subsequent to transaction authorization, however the data must be encrypted.

The magnetic stripe card standard for financial cards (ie credit and debit cards) allow for three tracks, called, not surprisingly, tracks one, two and three. Track one can contain up to 79 alpha numeric characters, while tracks two and three can contain up to 40 and 107 numeric characters respectively. Note that track one is the only track in the financial card standard that can contain letters - the other tracks can contain numbers only.

Magnetic stripes are not inherently secure. The problem with being easy to manufacture and encode is that it also makes it easy for the crooks to do the same. Several schemes are available for creating a secure encoding on a magnetic stripe, Watermark Magnetics, XSec, Holomagnetics, XiShield, Jitter Enhancement, ValuGard, and MagnaPrint are a few. The contacts for these technologies are listed at the end of the paper.

Magnetic stripes are commonly found on credit cards, access level cards and other cards used in all kinds of applications. (Note: This well-established technology is used in industries with low- to medium-data storage requirements.) Black or Brown Stripes: Magnetic stripe cards are simply PVC cards with either black or brown stripes on them (made up of magnetic particles of resin). Brown stripes are generally low-coercivity (LoCo), while black stripes are high-coercivity (HiCo).

Check magnetic stripe readers regularly at each terminal/register to be sure they are operating properly. Calculate the percentage of key-entered transactions to total transactions for each magnetic stripe reader. If the number of key-entered transactions is greater than 3 percent, try to find out why. Conduct regular training and review sessions on the importance of swiping the card with sales associates.

A Magnetic Stripe Reader (MSR) and BARCODE reader can be attached to a PT2000 at the same time using Percon/PSC cable number 00-888-27. However, this cannot be used for 2 barcode inputs, it is for MSR and BARCODE READER input only. The PT2000 is designed to only read one track of MSR information. This means that you can read track one, two or three but not more than one track. Which track you read will be dependant on the design of the reader you are using.

Yes. Although in most applications, you will need to read only one track from a card, you can order magnetic stripe readers to read any combination of tracks, such as track two only, tracks one and three, all tracks, etc.

Paper vs Plastic? ] [ Gift Card Pricing ] [ Certified Terminals ] [ Gift Card Samples ] [ *NEW* Gift Card Software ] [ Partners/Affiliates ] [ Request More Info ]