Hi,

I work for a software house and we have written many applications to process credit cards. I am using some modified software and our hardware to read the tracks on my new Switch card.

I received it yesterday and it doesn't work! I tried to buy petrol this morning and oil at lunchtime as a second test. Petrol purchase failed because it was "invalid start date" and oil purchase failed because of "start invalid".

The bank (Royal Bank of Scotland) although I am thinking of changing one of those letters to a "W", say two things which REALLY p**s me off so I want to tell them what is wrong with the card.

The say:

1...The card was never swiped at either petrol station for fuel or Halfords for oil because there is no record at the Switch centre of it. HELLO!!!!! they both did it in front of me and the woman in Halford was swiping it over and over as I was on the phone moaning to the bank.

2...If it works in a cash machine (which it does) there is nothing wrong with it

Now, can anyone confirm if ALL attempted swipes are logged at the Switch centre because I would have thought if the card number, start date or expiry date was wrong the EPOS software would just reject it without going to Switch's systems?

I have read the data from Track1 and Track2. Track 1 is completely blank which looks a bit fishy anyway but I just want to know how Switch checks valid-from dates.


Can anyone please help.

Cheers,
Chinnybloke

Your reader may not be able to read it is one option... Track 1 IIRC is the financial info so cannot be blank?

Could be horribly wrong tho

From my work in the EPOS world, I'd find it extremely unlikely that all swipes are logged. A mag stripe could be damaged or miss read (which is pretty rare) in which case the EPOS software will just fail the data on the validation.

I had a new HSBC card which struggled on swipes just after I had it. Just rung the call centre, explained the problem and got a new one which worked fine.

Hi,

I have swiped another Switch card through (HSBC) and we got both tracks worth of data from that so the reader should be ok unless newer ones have new encoding or something?

Cheers,
Chinnybloke

My first thought would be a faulty card then.

I wonder if it's Chip and PINned? But they should work with std readers still.

Another question: is your reader high coercivity?

I was talking balls before, Track 1 is reserved for the card issuer, track 2 is the track defined for banking apps. I am unsure whether switch put the start date in discretionary data or are expecting it to be in track 1.

God, this is dredging parts of my knowledge...

Hi,

Not sure about "high coercivity". What does that mean?

I just wondered which of the 3 (are there more?) ways of handling the start date is used on Switch.

Spec just arrived from our bank....off to investigate.

Cheers

[Edited by chinnybloke - 7/15/2003 2:28:35 PM]