Magnetic stripe cards LoCo / HiCo

Magnetic cards are one of the cheapest way to save information.
The magnetic card reader allows you to read the contents of the record.

The location and parameters of the magnetic stripe are defined in the ISO 7811 standard.

Currently, two types of strips are used for magnetic cards:

• LoCo (low coercivity) – low coercivity of the belt – approx. 300 oe
• HiCo (high coercivity) – high coercivity coefficient – up to 4000 oe

A magnetic strip is a tape on which information can be coded. The magnetic stripe is read by dragging the card through the reader.

The magnetic strip allows for repeated recording and reading of information in digital form.

Record and read data from the card allows them to work effectively in self-identification systems, access control, time recording, maintenance-free systems and many more.

The HiCo magnetic stripe is the most popular stripe due to the higher resistance to demagnetisation. LoCo magnetic stripe cards are quite prone to demagnetisation and data loss.

The magnetic strip has 3 recording tracks with a total capacity of 75 alphanumeric characters and 147 digits. The relatively small capacity of the magnetic stripe is quite sufficient to record the card number, expiration date, owner’s personal details and other additional information.

Available characters for magnetic stripe coding:

• track 1 (76 characters): 01234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTVWXYZ!@#$^&'()*+-=,./\<>_:;][ (space)
• track 2 (37 characters): 0123456789:<=>
• track 3 (104 characters): 0123456789:<=>

Control characters:

• ;? – start and stop of tracks 2 and 3
• %? – start and stop of track 1

Control characters can not be encoded in the middle of the track, e.g.

• 12345;123 encodes only 123
• 12345?12345678 encodes only 12345

On some readers the displaying of control characters is on, and not on others, so the reader can read: ;12345? and 12345 and both are valid. Control characters are always coded.

In our offer you can choose from several colors of magnetic strips:

• gold (HiCo)
• silver (HiCo)
• blue (HiCo)
• green (HiCo)
• black (LoCo and HiCo)