This part of ISO/IEC 7811 is one of a series of International Standards describing the characteristics for identification cards as defined in the definitions clause and the use of such cards for international interchange.

This part of ISO/IEC 7811 specifies requirements for a high coercivity magnetic stripe (including any protective overlay) on an identification card and encoding technique. It takes into consideration both human and machine aspects and states minimum requirements.

Coercivity influences many of the quantities specified in this part of ISO/IEC 7811 but is not itself specified. The main characteristic of the high coercivity magnetic stripe is its improved resistance to erasure. This is achieved with minimal probability of damage to other magnetic stripes by contact while retaining read compatibility with magnetic stripes as defined in ISO/IEC 7811-2.

This standard provides for a card capacity of approximately 10 times that of a card conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-6. The number of tracks has been increased to six, each track being approximately half the width of tracks conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-6, located so that readers designed to read these high density tracks will also be able to read cards conforming to ISO/IEC 7811-2 and ISO/IEC 7811-6. Data is encoded in 8 bit bytes using the MFM encoding technique. Data framing is used to limit error propagation and error correction techniques further improve reliability of reading.

It is the purpose of this series of International Standards to provide criteria to which cards shall perform. No consideration is given within these International Standards to the amount of use, if any, experienced by the card prior to test. Failure to conform to specified criteria should be negotiated between the involved parties.

ISO/IEC 10373-2 specifies the test procedures used to check cards against the parameters specified in this part of ISO/IEC 7811.