Magnetic stripe is an option that can be added to any of the standard card stock.  Magnetic Stripe comes in two basic configurations a) HIGH-Coercivity and b) LOW-Coercivity.  Magnetic stripes have three tracks which when programmed contain data.  The magnetic stripe physical dimensions and data characteristics are standardized by The American National Standards Institute.

• Track 1 is 7 bits per character, with a total of 79 Alphanumeric Characters.
• Track 2 is 5 bits per character, with a total of 40 Numeric Characters.
• Track 3 is 5 bits per character, with a total of 107 Numeric Characters.

 TIP on determining what type of magnetic stripe cards you have:
Visually you can tell if you have Hi-Co verses Lo-CO cards by the color of the magnetic stripe itself.  Lo-Co stripes will tend to have a brownish color appearance while the Hi-Co stripes will appear to be a blackish color.

All magnetic card swipe readers and card printer manufactures are also set to these standards so the data contained within the tracks can be read or written to easily with our photo ID software.   When interfacing to Time and Attendance or Access Control you need to be careful as you need to understand the data structure their readers understand.  Many times this information is not available from the Time and Attendance or Access Control system you are attempting to interface to.

So what does Coercivity Mean?

Coercivity is the term used to designate how strong a magnetic field must be to affect data encoded on the stripe, and therefore, how immune the data is to damage.

The encoding technique is the same as for LoCo technology, except that it requires a stronger electrical current in the write head. Virtually immune to domestic-type magnets, HiCo substantially decreases the chances of accidental data erasure. Despite this superiority, HiCo hasn’t yet replaced LoCo technology, due to the widely established base of LoCo encoders and the increased cost of HiCo encoders. Standard magnetic stripe readers, however, can read either HiCo or LoCo stripes.

For the techies Coercivity is measured in Oersteds (Oe), the coercivity of a common credit card is about 300 Oe, considered low coercivity. Consequently magnetic money clips, refrigerator magnets, etc., play havoc with the data on your credit card’s stripe. High coercivity (HiCo) magnetic stripe technology relies on particles -- generally barium ferrite (low coercivity uses iron oxide) -- with coercivity values ranging from 2500 to 4000 Oe.

The ISO\IEC 7810, 11, 12, and 13 series of standards specify a three-track format, encoding scheme, and bit density for all financial card applications, if you are looking for additional data.