Encoding & Access
Magnetic stripe
The magnetic band on the back of a card that stores data in tracks.
Mag stripe cards encode data a reader can swipe. They come in high-coercivity (HiCo) and low-coercivity (LoCo) versions.
The stripe stores a small amount of data across up to three tracks that a reader picks up on a swipe. Choosing between HiCo and LoCo matters, the card's coercivity has to match your encoder or the data will not write correctly.
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