Re: Card swipe without a display screen

"RPG400-L" <rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 07/12/2017 04:56:04
AM:

----- Message from Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> on Tue, 11 Jul
2017 18:37:24 -0400 -----

To:

"RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)"

<rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject:

Re: Card swipe without a display screen

On 11 July 2017 at 17:44, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A card has a 111-character data strip on the back of the card. We can

not

find an example, or figure out how to properly capture that data in

our RPG

program. We can write a display file with a 111-char field (CNTFLD

37) and

successfully capture the data but none of us have ever seen magnetic

stripe

data displayed on a POS terminal. Do others read magnetic stripes? Is

so,

how?

Guessing the customer is using a 5250 as a POS terminal rather than
use an actual POS device? If so, consider making the 111 character
'scan code' field nondisplay and maybe CHECK(RA) (I think that's the
code for auto record advance). Then it doesn't show, but was
captured. The user will know it was scanned when the screen changes
to the 'customer is Fred Bloggs' display instead of the 'Please scan
now' display.
--buck

This is exactly what we do. i.e., Accept the swipe data into a non-display
field--treat it like a password. Depending on what you're using to swipe
the cards (a keyboard with a built-in Magnetic Stripe Reader (MSR) or a
separate MSR on a keyboard wedge, etc.), it may be programmed to
automatically transmit/enter the Enter-key for you--ours do.

Also, the magnetic stripe card standards actually dictate three separate
tracks--although only the first two are generally used. Track one is 79
alphanumeric characters (76 data characters) and track two is 40
alphanumeric characters (37 numeric data characters). See any of the
following links:

https://www.q-card.com/about-us/iso-magnetic-stripe-card-standards/page.aspx?id=1457

https://www.magtek.com/content/documentationfiles/d99800004.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card

At least these are the standards for financial cards. I believe the
Wikipedia link covers other magnetic stripe card standards as well.

Michael Quigley
Computer Services
The Way International
www.TheWay.org