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Elements of Card Design
Single-Track Option (JIS)
The default data format for a single-track magnetic stripe module is the JIS (Japanese Industrial
Standard) Type II format.
The maximum number of characters for the JIS format is 69 characters. These characters can
include spaces, numeric characters (0–9), uppercase alphabetic characters (A–Z), lowercase
alphabetic characters (a–z), and the following special characters:
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ ] ^ _ ~ { | } ~
A PC running a Japanese edition of a supported Windows operating system also supports
Japanese-language special characters and 55 Katakana characters. They include the following:
Special characters:
45 Katakana characters:
10 Katakana characters:
The magnetic stripe data uses shift-JIS, which embeds a hidden "shift-in" and "shift-
out" character each time the Japanese-language characters start and end. Each
transition between normal characters and shifted characters is surrounded by these
two control characters. They are encoded on the magnetic stripe. Thus, each hidden
character reduces the number of characters you can encode by one character.
