Chapter 3. Magnetic stripe tracks
The width of a magnetic stripe track is standardized at about one-tenth of an inch, but as you have likely noticed, most magnetic stripes are wider than this. Why is this? It is because there are multiple tracks on the same stripe. Think of a track as a line of text on paper. You can have a single line or you can stack multiple lines on top of each other and fit more data on the same page. Such is the case with magnetic stripes. Stacking multiple tracks on top of each other enables multiple ‘lines’ of data to be stored on the same stripe and card. Most cards are of the two-track or three-track varieties though it is technically possible to have as many tracks as will fit on the card.
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