Magnetic Stripe Formats - Polaroid 539957-020 Rev. A User Manual

Magnetic Stripe Formats

Three-Track Option
The default data formats for a three-track magnetic stripe option are:
• Track 1 — IATA
• Track 2 — ABA
• Track 3 — TTS
This combination is often abbreviated IAT. This format is called ISO format.
IATA (International Air Transport Association)
The maximum number of characters for IATA format is 76 characters. These
characters can include spaces, upper case alphabetic characters, numeric
characters, and the following special characters:
! # $ % ' ( ) * + , - . / ; : < @ > = ^ ] \ [ " & _
ABA (American Bankers Association)
The maximum number of characters for ABA format is 37 characters. Numeric
characters and the following special characters are allowed:
: ; < = >
TTS (Thrift Third Standard)
The maximum number of characters for TTS format is 104 characters. Numeric
characters and the following special characters are allowed:
: ; < = >
Single-Track Option
The default data encoding format for a single-track magnetic stripe module is the
JIS Type II format.
JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard)
The maximum number of characters for the JIS format is 69 characters. These
characters can include spaces, numeric characters, upper case alphabetic
characters, lower case alphabetic characters, and the following special characters:
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ ] ^ _ ~ { | } ~
72 Card Design and Setup