Mastercard to end magnetic strip on cards

Mastercard says chip-and-pin and new biometric cards that use fingerprints, offer greater security. The company 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 Mastercard calls a long runway for companies accepting payments to move to chip-and-pin.

According to the BBC article cited in the source, the magnetic strip began life in the 1960s as an IBM project to create identity cards for CIA staff, with one of its engineers, Forrest Parry, having the idea of sticking information encoded on a strip of magnetic tape to a plastic card.