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From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: ATT Universal Card (dual card)
Message-ID: <12657@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 17:23:31 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 683, Message 7 of 11


I haven't looked at the ANSI specs recently, but I suspect that trying
to set up a card that had more than one stripe would violate the ANSI
requirements for card striping, which are very precise in terms of
defining "top" and "bottom" of card, etc.  Also, I can think of few
things with more potential for confusion by a typical card user than
trying to figure out which way to feed in the card for different
situations.  Even now people have problems since some readers want the
card right-side-up, others want them upside-down, some face-up, some
face-down, etc.  It would be a human factors nightmare to have a dual
stripe that was card position dependent.

As for the calling card number aspect of the Universal card, the
number does not include the necessary PIN, which is mailed to the
customer separately.  One can argue the insufficiency of four digit
PINS in the general case, but that's pretty much an industry standard,
and at least it's not on the card.


Lauren


[Moderator's Note: Welcome back to the Digest, Lauren! We haven't had
a posting from you in YEARS. For the new readers among us, Lauren was
a regular Digest contributor several years ago.   PAT]