RFID + Magstripe Combo Card

At a glance

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Magnetic-stripe track structure

• ISO/IEC 7813 defines Track 1 (Alphanumeric, 79 chars, IATA financial format), Track 2 (Numeric, 40 chars, ABA financial format) and Track 3 (ISO/IEC 4909, 107 chars, read-write). Hospitality and campus programmes typically encode site-specific data on Track 2 and/or Track 3.
• Proud Tek encodes any combination of tracks at the factory or ships blank stripes for front-desk / card-office encoding. Track-3 read-write usage is where legacy campus cashless-payment and laundry-credit programmes still live.

RFID chip matrix

• MIFARE Classic 1K / 4K — the legacy hospitality and access-control default, paired with ISO/IEC 14443-A at 13.56 MHz.
• MIFARE DESFire EV2 / EV3 — AES-128 secure tier, recommended when the RFID side is also carrying high-value access (luxury hospitality, regulated gaming, enterprise HQ).
• MIFARE Ultralight EV1 / C — disposable / single-issue combo for events, single-stay hospitality, or transit day-passes.
• NTAG 213 / 216 — NFC-Forum Type 2 for phone-readable marketing or loyalty payload alongside the magstripe.
• HID iCLASS SE / SEOS compatible — enterprise access-control ecosystems where the magstripe is retained for legacy POS or elevator head-ends.

Physical construction and durability

• ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 geometry (85.60 × 53.98 mm, 0.76-0.84 mm thickness depending on stripe lamination tier); ISO/IEC 10373-1 / 10373-2 test methods for flex, torsion, UV, and magnetic-stripe durability.
• PVC core with PET/ABS laminate is the standard; PET-only or PC (polycarbonate) is specified for higher-temperature environments (vehicle dashboards, sunlit kiosks) and for longer guaranteed life (5-7 years under hospitality wear patterns).

Encoding workflow

• Desktop encoders from HID Fargo, Magicard, Evolis, Entrust, and Zebra support dual-rail encoding in one pass: magstripe tracks + RFID chip programmed simultaneously during print.
• Factory pre-encoding is available for bulk issuance — UID allocation + magstripe payload delivered per-card with a CSV manifest for import into the PMS, card-office ERP, or access-control database.

Hospitality PMS and campus-card compatibility

• Hospitality PMS: Oracle Opera Cloud, Mews, Cloudbeds, Infor HMS, Protel — all integrate at the lock/head-end layer and are agnostic to card-source supplier.
• Campus card platforms: CBORD, Transact (formerly Blackboard), Atrium, Heartland OneCard — accept combo cards with ISO/IEC 14443-A chip + ISO/IEC 7811-2 HiCo stripe. Factory manifests ship with both UID and track-data columns to simplify import.

Printing and personalisation

• Full-colour offset (CMYK + Pantone spot, ISO 12647-2 process control) for runs from 1,000 cards; UV digital at 600-1200 dpi for short runs; dye-sublimation retransfer at the front desk for variable-data (guest name, room, check-in date).
• Spot UV, hot-foil stamp, embossed numbering, signature panel, hologram overlay — all compatible with combo construction provided the stripe area retains the unlaminated read surface.

Payment-card adjacency (PCI awareness)

• When Track-2 data on the combo card is used for cashless-payment on a campus card or loyalty stored-value programme, PCI-DSS v4.0 segmentation rules apply to the issuance, encoding, and handling systems that touch that track.
• Combo cards used purely for facility access / hospitality room keys (no PAN, no cardholder data) fall outside PCI scope; the distinction matters during tender response and integrator scoping.

Lifecycle and migration economics

• Typical magnetic-to-RFID transition runs 18-36 months across a hospitality portfolio or 24-48 months across a university campus; combo cards absorb the cost of the mid-transition period where both rails must be supported.
• At steady state (post-migration) the combo card is re-issued as RFID-only, saving the ~USD 0.05-0.10 per-card stripe cost once the magstripe-only reader base is fully retired.

Supply chain and MOQ

• Standard MOQ 1,000 for custom-printed combo cards; blank stock (Classic 1K + HiCo 2750) dispatches in 2-3 business days. Custom production lands in 5-7 business days at 1,000-10,000 units and scales to 1,000,000+ with scheduled call-off.
• Dual-source procurement (OEM for new-platform certification, factory-direct for steady-state replacement) applies to combo cards exactly as it does to RFID-only cards.

Environmental and end-of-life

• FSC-certified paperboard jackets, r-PET card cores, and PLA substrates are supported where ESG reporting (EU ESPR, LEED, Green Key) requires documented recycled or bio-based content; operators typically call these out at tender stage.
• At end of life the magstripe is degaussed and the PVC core routed to the local recycling stream; DESFire EV3 chips are zeroised via factory re-encode when cards are decommissioned in bulk.