That’s why no one can take a student ID and use it to pay at their favorite clothing store. When these pieces of data are swiped into a computer that can understand the data, a defined action will occur. For other use cases like college students, student ID number and pre-paid cafeteria account number are encoded. Your methods of payment, things like account number and bank routing number are encoded.

When the card is swiped, the data is read and passed to the system, which then performs a defined action based on the data collected.īefore we get to an example we need to clarify what data can be stored on the magnetic stripe. What you need to know is that tracks 1 and 3 can store up to 85 characters while track 2 can only store up to 30 characters. Hundreds of customers utilize magnetic stripes in many ways beyond the usual so if you have a specific question talk to one of our system specialists and they will help determine if you can accomplish what you are thinking.Ī mag stripe is made up of three ‘tracks’ which allows you to encode and store three pieces of information. Other than payments, magnetic stripes are commonly used for unlocking doors, clocking in and out at work, libraries, loyalty programs and cafeteria lunch programs to name a few.

Magnetic stripe card encoder software