Magnetic cards

Hardware and OEM components

Hardware and OEM components for magnetic cards, chip cards and RFID transponder technology

BasicCard® development kits

BasicCard® is the first smart card you can program in BASIC. Developers can create their own smart card application within only a few hours. Our development kits contain everything needed for your startup.

RFID transponder

RFID transponder tags in various shapes and assorted transponder types e.g. EM4102, EM4450, Hitag-1, Hitag-2, Hitag-S, MIFARE® Classic, MIFARE® DESFire®, I-Code, Legic, ...

Magnetic cards are the grandfathers of machine readable identification

Since its inception the credit card and henceforth the magnetic card is highly trusted worldwide for cashless payment.

This affordable card in conjunction with low cost readers makes it excellent for identification purposes like time control, access control or membership programs.

The ISO standards 7810 and 7811 standardize the physical measurements of the card and the coding of the stored data. This grantees high compatibility between different brands and lower development time for applications.

We manufacture magnetic cards with laminated printing as specified in ISO-7811 and ISO-7816.

ISO-7810 specifies the measurements of a card while ISO-7811 specifies the position of the magnetic strip on the card. ISO-7811 also specifies the structure and the coding of stored data. It splits the magnetic strip into three tracks and tells what characters are to used on a track and how to code these characters.

LoCo and HiCo

In general there are two types of magnetic cards: LoCo and HiCo. The difference between those types is how easy it is to magnetize the magnetic strip to store data. The force used to magnetize the magnetic strip is called Oerstedt (Oe).

LoCo cards are coded with a force of about 300 Oe and HiCo cards with about 4000 Oe. Most cards, about 95%, on the market are LoCo cards because in a normal environment these are good enough. Take look at the decades old credit card or bank card for example. HiCo cards should be used in environments where strong magnetic fields are to be expected. This to protect against data loss due to strong magnetic fields.

LoCo and HiCo are not compatible. A HiCo reader can not read a LoCo card and vice versa. So make sure before you place a card order which type your equipment supports.

Magnetic strip data structure

A magnetic strip is split into three tracks for data storage. The tracks are differentiated by coding rule, data density and character set. This is why the different tracks can store different amounts of data. For example track 2 has a data density of 75 bit per inch (bpi) which allows for 40 numeric characters of data. This low density allows worn down equipment to read the data without errors.

track	coding	data density	character set
1	IATA	210 bpi, 7 bits / character	79 alphanumeric characters (a, b, c, ..., 1, 2, 3, ...)
2	ABA	75 bpi, 5 bits / character	40 numeric characters (1,2, 3, ...)
3	THRIFT	210 bpi, 5 bits / character	107 numeric characters (1,2, 3, ...)

You can find information about our reader and writer as OEM part or connection ready device in our shop.

If you got further questions please contact us.