lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) (09/27/90)
I haven't looked at the ANSI specs recently, but I suspect that trying to set up a card that had more than one stripe would violate the ANSI requirements for card striping, which are very precise in terms of defining "top" and "bottom" of card, etc. Also, I can think of few things with more potential for confusion by a typical card user than trying to figure out which way to feed in the card for different situations. Even now people have problems since some readers want the card right-side-up, others want them upside-down, some face-up, some face-down, etc. It would be a human factors nightmare to have a dual stripe that was card position dependent. As for the calling card number aspect of the Universal card, the number does not include the necessary PIN, which is mailed to the customer separately. One can argue the insufficiency of four digit PINS in the general case, but that's pretty much an industry standard, and at least it's not on the card. Lauren [Moderator's Note: Welcome back to the Digest, Lauren! We haven't had a posting from you in YEARS. For the new readers among us, Lauren was a regular Digest contributor several years ago. PAT]
la063249@zach.fit.edu (Bill Huttig) (09/28/90)
Why can't the program the calling card database with the Visa number instead of a different calling card . MCI kind of does this with visa phone ... some card numbers are 13 digits others 16 (+4 PIN) so why does AT&T have to have 10 + 4 digit cards they could accept 16 + 4 digits? The first three digits of their MC/Visa card is not the same as the first three digits of any vaid phone # or any vaid NPA.