What is coercivity?
A. Measured in Oersteds, coercivity is the measure of how difficult it is to encode information on the magnetic stripe. A standard bank card has a coercivity of approximately 300 Oe (Oersteds) and is considered to be low coercivity. In Japan there is a second stripe on the credit cards with a coercivity of 600 Oe. The trend is to move towards higher coercivity with values of 2100, 2750, 3600 and 4000 Oersteds being common. High coercivity magnetic stripes bring a new collection of parameters to the magnetic stripe world and higher is not always better. Initial coercivity is defined by the type of particles used to manufacture the stripe. Gamma Ferric Oxide will give you a low coercivity stripe, Barium Ferrite will give you a high coercivity stripe. The material alone does not define the final coercivity of the stripe as the manufacturing process will change the value usually in the downwards direction. It is possible to raise the coercivity of particles by including other agents in the
