Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) is a presidential directive that President George W. Bush signed following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

An ATM skimmer is a card reader that is installed on some ATMs by criminals in order to steal the card numbers and PINs of the victims who use them.

Credit cards use the Luhn Check Digit Algorithm. The main purpose of the Luhn Check Digit Algorithm is to catch data entry errors, but it does double duty here as a weak security tool.

A test credit card number is the card number of a fake live credit account provided by a credit card company in order for retailers to verify that their card readers are working properly and that they are compatible with a specific credit card brand. Test credit card numbers are read like real credit card numbers, but no money is actually moved.

Data is laid out on a standard magnetic card in three tracks. A magnetic stripe card may have any of these tracks or a combination of these tracks.
Track 1 was the first track standardized. The International Air Transportation Association (IATA) developed it and it is still reserved for their use. It is 210bpi with room for 79 7-bit characters.

A magnetic card is a rectangular plastic object (credit/debit card) that contains either a magnetic object embedded within the card or a magnetic stripe on the card’s exterior. A magnetic card can store any form of digital data.

Mondex is a specific smart card which was developed by England’s National Westminster Bank in 1990. Its design was intended to serve as electronic cash or a virtual electronic wallet. Any amount of money can be transferred to the Mondex smart card.

A smart card contains an integrated circuit (IC) chip containing a central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM) and non-volatile data storage. Data stored in the smart card’s microchip can be accessed only through the chip operating system (COS).

A smart card is a mini computer which requires programming to run. A smart card doesn’t contain an interface-like display or keyboard, so smart card readers are used to read or update the data tofrom smart cards. Smart cards contain an operating system which provides a platform to run applications.

Smart Card Readers are also known as card programmers (because they can write to a card), card terminals, card acceptance device (CAD), or an interface device (IFD). There is a slight difference between the card reader and the terminal.