Who invented magnetic strip on credit cards

The UK moved to chip-and-pin for all card payments in , but in the US, some magnetic strip systems are still in use. Mastercard says chip-and-pin and new biometric cards that use fingerprints, offer greater security. The firm claims to be the first payment network to phase out the technology.

A spokesperson told the BBC the level of global acceptance of chip-and-pin was such that the time was right to begin phasing out the magnetic strip. The slow phasing out is to leave what the firm calls a "long runway" for companies accepting payments to move to chip-and-pin. Still, Vrancart predicts the stripe will be replaced not by a different card, but by smartphones. They can instead whip out their iPhones and fire up the Starbucks card mobile app.

The app calls up a bar code that the barrista scans in to debit your preloaded gift card. But he also says the original concept of the stripe will last. More than just a mag-stripe maker Svigals considers the magnetic stripe his biggest achievement among his myriad accomplishments. See related: Debit card payments pass cash, credit cards, U. The editorial content on this page is based solely on the objective assessment of our writers and is not driven by advertising dollars.

It has not been provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Marcia Frellick is a former CreditCards. Essential reads, delivered straight to your inbox. By providing my email address, I agree to CreditCards. Your credit cards journey is officially underway.

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How does the Florida man who patented the magnetic strip feel about the chip card? By Times Staff Writer. Published Feb. Explore all your options.

Up next: Just a few own world's wealth. Care about your credit score? Tampa Bay party planners face another reset Nov. Where is the Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay? Florida ordered 90, child vaccine doses. The magnetic credit card strip. What can you tell us about it? It sounds foolish, but that is Eric. I look at problems as challenges.

I turn every problem into a challenge and I simplify it. In other words, they knew who the credit risks were, and they would take those account numbers, provide them to the merchants, and the merchants should not sell to those people. We want the merchant not to be selling to those people. I took all those negative account numbers every month and put it into a memory system. At that time it was big magnetic drums. No internet, no PCs in those times in the 60s.

And then I gave the merchant a little keypad to connect it to the memory system. He would key in the account number and that was it.

So that was really the first point of sale device. Very simple solution. My first thought was to punch holes, the Hollerieth code, into the credit card, knock off a little edge of the corner to make it look like a punch card and punch holes in it, but that was not economically feasible.

Right around that time reel to reel tape recorders came out. If figured—this is a perfect example as to why we need to pay attention. I learned about reel to reel tape recorders, very simple process. As long as they would put it in slow and pull it out rapidly, because I put what was called, start and stop synchronization pulses on the tape.

As long as they pulled it out rapidly it looked like the mimic tape recorder. That was a long answer to a very simple problem. So, installing that in New York in this largest department store all throughout their system, that got the word out big time.

Then it went viral all over the country and then in American Express picked up that whole concept to use it in the credit industry, and then, of course, it was just billions of people after that. How did you get to that point where people started reaching out to you for inventions? Ron: My expertise was—I was drafted for the service during the Korean War at age That was when I thought I still wanted to be involved with graphic arts and commercial art, but I really loved engineering and the technical aspect of things, because I was making a lot of my own toys and did a lot of reading.

I was drafted at age 18, went off to Korea. During that time I realized that I had a little bit of a different talent. I got a job with a large company at the time as a development engineer after I graduated. Then I worked my way up to another position with another large company as chief engineer and then realized I was and entrepreneur and a liaison between the technical staff and the consumer, the customer or the merchant, because I tried to convey to them the message that they understood, in a manner and in a way that the technical people would understand.

Then I realized that I truly was an entrepreneur. That word got out that I was the person that could solve problems and understood, and could take the customer or the consumer to the engineers and form a liaison where they would understand each other.

After I did that, and I was working for a very large company I realized I was a problem solver and I could come solve challenges and find that gift behind the challenge and I formed my own little company, and that company just started growing. And it grew, and grew, and I had a staff of people and had a few private placements to fund it and it was involved with a lot of very interesting projects then.

It was very successful and the company grew further, then after that, sold it off and started forming other companies and going forward with my career. During that time I had the public company we developed other things such as MLS, multiple listing service for real estate, voice response for the banking industry, came up with the formula that [inaudible ] and how to grow chickens to full maturity in eight weeks, and healthier chickens other than the low maturity, and then got involved, very interestingly, with the New York Stock Exchange.

Eric: All these inventions, each of them requires a certain focus and a certain level of expertise. Did you hire a lot of smart people around you to figure these problems out or was it you kind of spearheading each one? Everything was solved with hardware. I had a real good staff of drafting people, engineers, manufacturing people, and good managers. We worked together and I listened to what was needed in the field, and came up with solutions on how to solve those problems.

But I always simplified things in a way where I could understand them, and once I could understand them I could spearhead and actually take them through the results. As clients would come to me with their problems I was able to reduce it to a simple challenge and come up with a solution.

Eric: Can you share, and you might have alluded to the framework, but can we crystallize what the framework looks like so people understand how Ron Klein solves problems?

Ron: Well, the framework is, I never had a strategic plan. The challenge was there and I always reduced it to a simple challenge.

Let me see if I can explain it a little better. I always look for opportunity and I never really thought about—I was able to recognize opportunity when it came right in front of me. Anytime I got involved with any project I would consider it as opening a door to a task, and before I would close that door behind me I would look around in that environment and make sure there was a back door, worst casing it, in order to get out.

That was always my exit strategy, and it worked. In most cases you do have to change direction or do some rethinking because you learn along the way. Ron: Simplify. Anything, any task you take on, even if you wanted to make a home movie, if you put that in a flow chart, what do you need? You need a camera, you need a subject, you need a location, you need film in the old cameras, and so on and so forth.

What did I miss? Do I really have everything represented here? Then you can define it in a narrative way. When you get to a certain size it makes sense to document all these processes. Is that right? And I always found that taking a company from startup to the first million dollars is pretty much the entrepreneur who really understands what is needed to launch and all of the processes that he has to learn in order to get that far.

Now the challenge is getting from one to ten. Once you do that, taking it from ten to a hundred, usually is not the same person because now what you have to do is surround yourself with good systems people, operational people that know how to grow it to the next level.

At the Entrepreneurial Organization Conference you talked about reading, I think it was the Encyclopedia cover to cover, or was it something else? Ron: Yes it was.

My first challenge was—in the service I had—well first, before I even got to the service, at age 4 I had a very serious disease and I was hospitalized for three months. It was an infectious disease, scarlet fever.

I was hospitalized for three months again, I was jaundiced, my liver was turning cirrhosis, I was very, very ill, and after they finally dismissed me from the hospital for contagious diseases I had to convalesce at home for a year and a half. In a year and a half I read 18 volumes of the Encyclopedia of Britannica, cover to cover and what a wealth of information. That was the time that I read all of the encyclopedias.

Ron: Yes. It made me thankful for every day that I had. Today we have to look at life as quality and quantity.