Plastic magnetic stripe card with encoded information as the loyalty card

Plastic magnetic stripe cards are probably the most widely used loyalty cards. Encoding information within magnetic stripes is also the most widely used way to store data on loyalty cards. A plastic magnetic stripe card after encoding process can be a bank card, or a hotel key card, or a casino loyalty card, or a hypermarket discount card, or a library card, or a fuel card etc.

According to the ISO7811 standard, the magnetic stripes can be divided into loco and hico types. The loco(300oe) or the hico(2750oe) magnetic stripe is usually used on the loyalty card.
The magnetic stripe can be various colors according to market demand, such as gold, silver, red, green, blue, brown, black and so on. The reason why the magnetic stripes appear in different colors is caused by applying the desired color to the protective layer of the standard magnetic stripe. The color of the magnetic stripe does not affect the normal reading and encoding.

The magnetic stripe consists of three tracks: the alphanumeric track – Track 1, the digital track – Track 2 and the read/write track – Track 3. Whether the magnetic stripe can be read or encoded is mainly related to electromagnetic performance, including saturation curve slope, signal amplitude, resolution, pulsing and erasability.