It will be located on the back of the card, on the upper edge, following the ISO 7811-4, 7811-5 standards. This magnetic stripe will be integrated in the card and it will contain 3 tracks, track 1 and 2 with read encoding station, track 3 with read/write station, according to the international standards mentioned further on. The following standards are applied: ISO 7811/2, 7811/4, 7811.

Magstripes come in two main varieties: high-coercivity and low-coercivity, depending on the required resistance to magnetic fields. They can be:

• Magstripe LoCo(low-coercivity) 300 Oe.
• Magstripe HiCo(high-coercivity) 2750/4000 Oe.

The information contained on the magstripe can be organized within 3 tracks. The format and structure of the data of these tracks are regulated by international standards ISO7813 (for tracks 1 and 2) and ISO4909 (for track 3).

TRACK 1: Maximum capacity: 76 alphanumeric characters. Characters ASCII from 32 to 95: 0-9, A-Z, punctuation marks.

TRACK 2: Maximum capacity: 37 numeric characters. Characters ASCII from 48 to 63: 0-9, ;,=,?.

TRACK 3: Maximum capacity: 104 numeric characters. Characters ASCII from 48 to 63: 0-9, ;,=,?.

Magstripes available in an array of colors