4 ms·

Do cards still use magnetic strips? I thought it was all done on the chip nowadays?

• cbhl 8y ago
  Magnetic strips are still very common in the United States.
  • Maxion 8y ago
    Magnetic strips are found on virtually all credit cards, even on EMV cards.
    • gsnedders 8y ago
      Heck, virtually all cards still have embossed characters so you can take a carbon copy. That's just finally starting to go away in the past few years; magstripes will be here for a fair while longer.
      • SuperPaintMan 8y ago
        I actually had to use one of those the other day! I needed to check a guest into a hotel while the city municipality was working on the power so we were on emergency lights and no connectivity. Took a second, but that sound is just so satisfying.
      • rootusrootus 8y ago
        I'd like the card to disappear altogether. I do about half my daily transactions with NFC (Apple Pay) these days, and it's kind of irritating to have to reach into my pocket and fish out a card. Now, if Apple would allow me to nickname the damn cards so I could tell which is which, that would be grand. sigh
      • bradknowles 8y ago
        That's only true in the US. They got rid of those years ago in Europe. We are only now starting to catch up to where they were in about 1998. I know, because I moved to Europe in 1998, and I remember how huge of a change it felt like to me. I moved back to the US in 2006, and with regards to credit cards it felt like going back in time at least a couple of decades.
        • gsnedders 8y ago
          Almost every card I've ever had in the UK and Sweden has had embossed characters. All eight cards I currently have (in the UK) are embossed, including those issued by app-based banks. None have ever had a carbon copy made of them.
      • Tor3 8y ago
        The so-called 'Electron' cards (e.g. VISA Electron) don't have embossed characters - just ordinary printed characters. Banks often provide these as lower cost cards or cards for children. As the main difference from 'ordinary' cards is that you can't take a carbon copy I'm not sure why they're considered more 'child safe'. Maybe there's more than that, but as far as I can tell they work for everything else - my wife got one of those from the bank.
• Covzire 8y ago
  In the US they generally have both if issued in the last few years, but many places still accept magnetic strips. I don't use an ATM often anymore, maybe once or twice a year at most, but I've yet to see an ATM that only demands the chip instead of forcing you to insert the whole card, so chip-only debit and credit cards can't come soon enough. Curious if there's an easy way to make my stripe unreadable with my most used credit card, especially for dining where your card can disappear for several minutes at a time.
  • julianwachholz 8y ago
    Revolut lets you disable the magnetic strip and other functions (e.g. contactless) of your physical card via the App.
    • Milner08 8y ago
      As do Monzo, infact the magnetic strip is disabled as default and you can only enable it for 24 hours at a time.
    • deadbunny 8y ago
      This just disables making payments via the strip. It's not actually disabling anything on the card. You can still get details by reading the mag strip.
  • stef25 8y ago
    Wouldn't a magnet destroy whatever's written on the card's strip?
  • wongarsu 8y ago
    >an ATM that only demands the chip instead of forcing you to insert the whole card Inserting the whole card is also a security measure to be able to take the card away if an incorrect pin is entered 3 times, or if the card is left in the device after leaving the ATM.
    • jessaustin 8y ago