What is the difference between a low and high coercivity (LoCo and HiCo) magnetic stripe?
When ISO standards are used for magnetic stripe encoding and reading, the high coercivity magnetic stripe (2750 oersted and higher) will have far less failure than the low coercivity (300 oersted) stripe under normal usage. Data encoded on a LoCo card can be altered or destroyed by excessive use/wear, by contact with an ordinary household magnet (e.g. in a woman’s pocketbook or wallet), by contact with other encoded cards, or by fraud. Failure can also happen with data encoded on a HiCo card, but the chances of accidental alteration are far lower. Customers should consider that every time a magstripe card fails to read, it means the data must be entered manually which incurs additional labor cost and time lost. Thus the initially higher cost of HiCo magnetic stripes will be recouped over short period of usage. For plastic cards that are intended for daily/frequent use, or for 12 months or more of infrequent use, we recommend the HiCo magnetic stripe and encoding.
Related Questions
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