I used to develop kiosks that accepted credit cards for a company I started. We purchased some $20-$30 USB card swipers in order to capture credit card numbers

I used to develop kiosks that accepted credit cards for a company I started. We purchased some $20-$30 USB card swipers in order to capture credit card numbers and process orders. When you swiped the card, it would return an ASCII text string with the credit card number, name, and some additional codes (CVV1 and CVV2, I believe). If I recall correctly, the magnetic strip has a number of tracks, and you could program the reader to read one or all of these tracks. If you submitted the full string from the swipe to your merchant, you got a much better rate on the transaction. The device was something like this: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=usb+card+swipe+reader&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivns&resnum=3&biw=1214&bih=688&bav=on.2,or.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=9253952205062488166&sa=X&ei=BoB4Tb7pJ5CWsgP4uqSDAw&ved=0CF0Q8wIwAA#ps-sellers http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=usb+card+swipe+read... Anyway, seems to me there's nothing new here... just the fact that people can now get a device capable of decoding the tracks on a magnetic strip for $0 instead of $30.