Card Testing Services


CTI's Card Testing Services are applied to all Product Testing and Technology Testing. We offer worldwide ISO/IEC 17025 accredited quality assurance testing to certify and also to prevent re-issuance of financial / transport / ID cards.

The services are separated by the different stages of the card manufacturing and card processing equipment, all with the common goal to ensure your cards work worldwide, first time, every time.

If you wish to enquire about our services or for further information, please contact us via our Contact Page.
 


Card Reader / POS Test Cards



Overview
A suite of specially prepared test cards are prepared by CTI and provided for your technical staff for use in quality control/assurance, and to diagnose faults or intermittent problems in card readers or POS hardware. The diagnosis is performed by determining which Magnetic Stripe and/or IC characteristic the reader is most sensitive to. By determining the characteristic that is most problematic, the greatest weakness or issue (if one exists) can be identified and improved or repaired.

Each card is created with one or more Magnetic Stripe Encoded or Contact IC characteristics that can be set at either the limit required by the ISO/IEC standard or below the ISO/IEC limits by a certain severity. I.e. Magnetic Stripe Bit to Bit variation can be set to the ISO/IEC specification of 15% or at twice the ISO/IEC requirement (30%) for determining how reading equipment handles different characteristics. In addition, a compliant card that is well within the ISO/IEC limits can also be provided to serve as a baseline “good” card for testing faulty equipment.

Testing
Once the Reader Test Cards have been created, testing is performed and provided with the card to certify the encoded or contact IC characteristic. CTI can customise a card to your specific requirements or produce cards with the following common types of criteria:

Magnetic Stripe – ISO/IEC 7811-2 (Low Coercivity) and 7811-6 (High Coercivity)
  • Signal Amplitude at the ISO Limit for returned Cards: 64%
  • Bit Variation (Bit Spacing) at the ISO limit for returned cards: ± 15%
  • Adjacent Bit to Bit Variation (Jitter) at the ISO limit for returned cards: ± 15%
  • Subinterval Length (Length of 1 Bits) at the ISO limit for returned cards: ± 20%
  • Adjacent Subinterval Length (Jitter of 1 Bits) at the ISO limit for returned cards: ± 30%
  • Start and End of Encoding at the ISO Limit: 6.93 mm (0.252”) from edges
  • Start and End of Encoding at 50% below the ISO limit: 3.47 (0.126) or 4.93 mm (0,194”) depending on card type.
  • Encoded Track Location too high: All encoded tracks are written at the upper ISO limits.
  • Encoded Track Location too low: All encoded tracks are written at the lower ISO limits.
Contact IC – ISO/IEC 7816-1 (Physical Characteristics) and 7816-2 (Dimensions and Location of Contacts)
  • Dimensions and Location at minimum ISO limit
  • Contact Height at minimum ISO limit
  • IC Voltage at minimum or maximum ISO limit (emulated card)
  • IC Clock Speed at minimum or maximum ISO limit (emulated card)
 


Below is a list of Card Products and Card Technologies that are involved with this Card Testing Service.

Products:
Credit Cards / Debit Cards, Loyalty Cards / Gift Cards, Transport Cards, ID Cards & Driver Licences, Passports / MRTD

Technologies:
Magnetic Stripe, Smart Card / Chip Card, RFID / NFC Contactless, EMV Certification, Powered Card / Display Card, Biometric Card, Embossing & Printing

Contact us for further information, and we would also be happy to provide you with a Quotation.
 

Issuers




How well are your cards being read?
We can check for you!

CTI can measure the reading capability of your POS with our special test card suite. Talk to us to find out more.