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From: chk@alias.uucp (C. Harald Koch)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: AT&T Universal Card is Not Two Cards in One
Message-ID: <12758@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 90 16:17:47 GMT
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In article <12368@accuvax.nwu.edu> monty@sunne.east.sun.com (Monty
Solomon - Temp Consultant) writes:

> Well, that seems like an awfully easy thing to rectify with no new
> technology whatsoever: just put two magnetic stripes on the back of
> the card, one with the bankcard data and one with the phonecard data.

There is an ANSI standard describing the magnetic stripe on the back
of the card. I dont have it in front of me, but from what I remember:

The stripe contains four tracks. The first three are the same, while
the fourth is a larger, 'high-density' track. The third track is used
by financial institutions for encoding Visa and Mastercard, bank
cards, etc, and there is an ANSI standard describing this track
separately.

It seems to me, therefore, that the easiest solution (and the one that
should have been used in the first place) is to put the Calling Card
information on one of the other tracks. Then there is no ambiguity;
the card is both optically and magnetically a credit card and a phone
card.

But of course, they never asked me... :-)


C. Harald Koch  VE3TLA                Alias Research, Inc., Toronto ON Canada
chk%alias@csri.utoronto.ca      chk@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu      chk@chk.mef.org