ISO/IEC 7813

The standard defines:^{[citation needed]}

• physical characteristics, such as size, shape, location of magnetic stripe, etc.
• magnetic track data structures

ISO/IEC 7813 specifies the following physical characteristics of the card, mostly by reference to other standards:^{[citation needed]}

Embossed characters

by reference to ISO/IEC 7811

Embossing of expiration date

the format (MM/YY or MM-YY)

Magnetic stripe

by reference to ISO/IEC 7811

Integrated circuit with contacts

by reference to ISO/IEC 7816-1

Integrated circuit without contacts

by reference to ISO/IEC 10536-1, ISO/IEC 14443-1, and ISO/IEC 15693-1

Track 1 can store up to 79 alphanumeric characters. ISO 7813 specifies the following structure for track 1 data:^[2]

• SS : Start sentinel "%"
• FC : Format code "B" (The format described here. Format "A" is reserved for proprietary use.)
• PAN : Payment card number 4400664987366029, up to 19 digits
• FS : Field separator "^"
• NM : Name, 2 to 26 characters (including separators, where appropriate, between surname, first name etc.)
• FS : Field separator "^"
• ED : Expiration data, 4 digits or "^"
• SC : Service code, 3 digits or "^"
• DD : Discretionary data, balance of characters
• ES : End sentinel "?"
• LRC : Longitudinal redundancy check, calculated according to ISO/IEC 7811-2

%B4815881002867896^YATES/EUGENE JOHN         ^37829821000123456789?

%B4815881002861896^YATES/EUGENE L            ^^^356858      00998000000?

Track 2 can store up to 40 numeric or special characters; it uses a lower density magnetic encoding than Track 1 but a more compact character encoding. ISO 7813 specifies the following structure for track 2 data:^[2]

• SS : Start sentinel ";"
• PAN : Primary Account Number, up to 19 digits, as defined in ISO/IEC 7812-1
• FS : Field separator "="
• ED : Expiration date, YYMM or "=" if not present
• SC : Service code, 3 digits or "=" if not present
• DD : Discretionary data, balance of available digits
• ES : End sentinel "?"
• LRC : Longitudinal redundancy check, calculated according to ISO/IEC 7811-2

Track 3 uses the same density as track 1 but has the same character encoding as track 2, allowing it to store 107 numeric characters.^[2] It is virtually unused by the major worldwide networks and often isn't present on payment cards.^{[citation needed]}

A notable exception to this is Germany, where Track 3 content was used nationally as the primary source of authorization and clearing information for debit card processing prior to the adoption of the "SECCOS" ICC standards. Track 3 is standardized nationally to contain both the cardholder's bank account number and branch sort code (BLZ).^{[citation needed]}

Parsing Track 1 and Track 2 can be done with Regular Expressions.

^%B([0-9]{1,19})\^([^\^]{2,26})\^([0-9]{4}|\^)([0-9]{3}|\^)([^\?]*)\?$

This Regex will capture all of the important fields into the following groups:^{[citation needed]}

• Group 1: Payment card number (PAN)
• Group 2: Name (NM)
• Group 3: Expiration Date (ED)
• Group 4: Service Code (SC)
• Group 5: Discretionary data (DD)

^\;([0-9]{1,19})\=([0-9]{4}|\=)([0-9]{3}|\=)([^\?]*)\?$

• Group 1: Primary Account Number (PAN)
• =
• Group 2: Expiration date (ED) or =
• Group 3: Service code (SC) or =
• Group 4: Discretionary data (DD) or empty

• ISO/IEC 7813:2006

• Magnetic Track Parser, a Java library to parse magnetic track data
• Credit Card Track Data Parser, a Javscript library is for parsing credit card track data such as might be returned from a USB card reader
• magnet, a Ruby library for decoding the track data on magnetic stripe cards
• Magnetic-Stripe-Parser a .NET C Sharp library to parse magnetic track data direct from stream reader