00;00;07;00     This is a debit card, or it could be a credit card.

00;00;11;14     You all know one of these is evil, you use them countless times

00;00;14;15     probably more often than you wish you did.

00;00;16;22.   Millions of these get printed every year.

00;00;21;04     But I have a couple of questions about it.

00;00;23;07     And do you know how they actually work.

00;00;25;03     So right here is a magnetic strip actually got three different tracks information on it.

00;00;35;14     And how it works is really quite clever.

00;00;38;14     So it’s each strip each track has tiny, tiny little magnets in it,

00;00;46;22     I’m talking like 100 millionths of an inch thick each magnet.

00;00;51;10     And a magnet can be either a positive or a negative

00;00;55;19     or it can be a North charge or a South charge polarisation of it.

00;01;01;05     And once you have something that can be either that way or that way,

00;01;05;22     you’ve got binary code. So if you have the number three, for example,

00;01;10;15     the binary code for three is two ones.

00;01;16;00     So you could have two magnets polarised in the same direction.

00;01;19;10     And then and then the system will know that that’s a three

00;01;22;19     because it’s reading the binary code.

00;01;24;17     Or if it’s a two, it’s just a one and a zero,

00;01;27;19     which so you could have one polarised North one polarised south,

00;01;31;06     and that’s the two number one is actually just one polarised one way.

00;01;37;06     And the number zero is polarised the other way.

00;01;39;06     And as you get to other numbers that it becomes more complicated.

00;01;43;06     So that’s how this works. But why do we need it?

00;01;47;12     Because quite a while ago, we introduced this chip.

00;01;53;29     And now the chip does the exact same thing that the magnet does.

00;01;57;25     The reason why we have it is it more secure and more resilient.

00;02;03;22     Because you might find that your card has stopped working or this

00;02;07;25     stripes has stopped working. It’s because it’s become demagnetized.

00;02;10;22     Now all this stripe does is hold the details of the card.

00;02;15;08     So the long card number, the expiry date the three-digit code on the back.

00;02;19;10     And the reason why it was useful is it could swipe it into the machine.

00;02;22;28     And the machine would read all that information instantly,

00;02;25;20     you wouldn’t have to key it all in. But now we don’t need it, we have the chip.

00;02;30;01     Some of you might say, Well, sometimes the chip doesn’t work.

00;02;32;20     And that’s true. But you can just key in the details if needed.

00;02;37;28     I mean, I paid a vet bill the other day.

00;02;40;26     And the vet said to me, can you read me the loan card number, please?

00;02;43;26     Can you read me the expiry date, can you remove the three-digit code and he just

00;02;47;07     keyed it all in and away we go.

00;02;49;17     So how much additional money is being spent in creating cards

00;02;54;29     that still have this magnetic strip that really isn’t necessary anymore.

00;03;00;11     I have another question for you. If you’re my age or older,

00;03;05;02     you’ll know why we embossed the letters, we punch the letters out on these cards,

00;03;11;02     you might remember the old credit card machines where you would put the card in.

00;03;16;08     And then you would put a carbon copied three pieces of paper.

00;03;22;07     And then you would run the little roller over it.

00;03;25;18     And it would leave an imprint on the paper

00;03;29;07     and on three layers of the paper and you would keep one

00;03;32;15     and give one to the customer. And I think one was for another purpose.

00;03;36;02     And that’s why the embossing was there.

00;03;39;07     Because when you ran the roller over, it made an imprint on paper.

00;03;43;07     We haven’t done that. I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone use that.

00;03;48;19     Because again, you’ve now got the chip that can tell you the information.

00;03;52;12     Or if the chips not working or is faulty,

00;03;54;07     you can always just punch in the numbers into the point of sale device that you’re using.

00;03;59;09     So my question then is how much money do we spend creating these

00;04;03;06     special cars that have this special embossing on them?

00;04;06;13     That is now completely unnecessary and redundant.

00;04;09;24     So there’s two things on your common debit or credit card

00;04;15;02     Why do we still have a magnetic tape strip on the back?

00;04;20;00     Why do we still embossed cards with this raised lettering,

00;04;26;08     both of which are going to add to the cost

00;04;28;26     of how much it cost to produce one of these cards and like I said,

00;04;34;00     we produced millions of these every year. It’s food for thought

00;04;39;07     on how you could improve and basic everyday object that we use all the time.