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Bank card or Credit card plastic bag swiping trick

Home » Blog » Bank card or Credit card plastic bag swiping trick

Last updated: January 18, 2009





Have you ever had trouble swiping your Bank/Credit card at the checkout? Here is a card bag swiping trick for you.

The Problem:
Bank card or Credit card doesn’t work when swiped.

Solution:
Wrap the card in a thin, clear plastic bag and swipe it again.
Arrange a replacement of the card.

What can cause my Card to have bad reads?
The likely problems are dirty or scratched stripe, or erased stripe.



Prevention:
One way to prevent this is to use a thin layer of tape on all your cards from new.

Why does this trick work?
The card reader has a small induction coil that detects a succession of magnetic and non-magnetic zones in the card’s magnetic stripe. When the card is pulled through the reader, each magnetised zone makes a small electrical pulse as it passes the coil. The zones are arranged to encode the data needed to complete a transaction.

The magnetic stripe of your Card is made of fine particles of a magnetisable oxide embedded in a plastic binder. It can get damaged in many ways. When the card reader is reading the card a scratch or other defect in the magnetic stripe can cause a spike in the signal that a too-sensitive reader will interpret as a tick, meaning that the encoded data will fail the parity check and will cause a bad read.

Wrapping the card in plastic bag increases the distance between the card reader head and the magnetic stripe, thus reducing the strength of the signal and smooths out fluctuations and hence the card swipe works.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (3 responses)

  1. Tom says:
    February 15, 2015 at 3:33 pm

    Clear tape works when the card won’t swipe correctly. If one layer of tape doesn’t work, put two layers. Worked for me several times.

  2. ID Pro says:
    October 18, 2011 at 5:43 am

    Wow thanks for the tip. Though my cards are in good condition now, I will never know when I will need this trick. I hope the cashier accepts the card that way though.

  3. Edward Culligan says:
    May 2, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    That is very useful information on the credit card swiping. I don’t know why but I always seem to get my credit card strip messed up in my wallet. I can’t wait too give it a try next time my stripe goes bad.

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