A Complete Guide to Magnetic Stripes on Plastic Gift Cards |
PlasCards is a producer and manufacturer of magnetic stripe plastic cards, each order is created to the specification of the customer and their POS provider. It is the customer’s responsibility to provide us with accurate information. We can mail you sample test cards to help with the basic specs, such as the width and track encoded, but we cannot determine density or data to encode.
Here is how magstripe cards work for plastic cards, and what you need to know bedore orderingThere are 4 key pieces of information we need to process a plastic gift card order with a magnetic stripe. - If you are not sure, please ask your POS provider for this info.
Magstripe Width -There are several different widths of magnetic stripes: 1/2", 7/16”, 5/16”, 1/8” are the more common that we offer. We can determine this, simply by measuring the mag stripe with a ruler.
Magstripe Density –There are 4 common densities of mag stripe:
2750oe and 4000oe are commonly considered hi-co. We offer the 300oe, 600oe and 2750oe. The 4000oe is typically reserved for true credit cards which we do not print. OE density (oersted density) is the measurement of coercivity. This is a number representing the force it takes for another magnetic field to wipe the data encoded on the stripe to zero magnetism. So 4000oe is much harder to erase than a 300oe.
The Magstripe Color
Track(s) to be encodedAs stated in the width section above, there can be up to 3 tracks. You can encode 1 – 3 tracks, although track 3 is very rarely used. This means you can encode more than one track. Typically if 2 tracks are encoded they are encoded with the same information. Below are the specs for each track.
Track 1: 79 characters (alphanumeric) 7 bit = 210 bit /in. - Encoding starts with % and ends with ? the common field separator is ^
Q: How can you determine if your gift card is encoded on track 1 or track 2?
Track 1 will start with % and end with ? So, if your notepad shows any of this info on the swipe, it will tell you which track the encoding is on.
Data to encodeThe data to be encoded, is determines based off the POS system the cards will be used with. - You will need to ask your POS provider for this data. We really cannot help in determining this.There are 2 types of data: sequential and variable.
Sequential: All we need is a 'start number' and we will number up consecutively from that number. We do need to watch for prefixes and suffixes to be used. That is a leading or ending set of numbers/letters that stays constant. Please consult your POS provider about this.
Additional information:What information is stored on a gift card magnetic stripePlease understand that the actual gift cards do not have value - (this is a very common mistake). They only contain data that references to the customers POS database, much like an account number. The values are held in your POS software's database. All the gift cards ever has encoded on its magstripe is its number. And each gift card has a unique number. What are magnetic stripe cards mostly used for?
Hopefully this page provides a good resource to you, about plastic card magnetic stripe information. This can be very technical, so we tried to stay in the realm of what you need to know to place an order for magstripe gift cards. Please ask us if you have any additional questions. |