Approximately 70% of people in the United States own at least one credit card. Your credit card’s magnetic strip can store up to 60 characters of personal data such as your account number and name. Magnetic card readers are then used to read the stored data. Smart card readers, as well as magnetic strip readers, are widely used for a variety of other reasons. Here are three main instances in which scanners such as these are used.

1. To Scan Lottery Tickets.

Almost half of all adults in the United States state that within the past year, they have purchased a state lottery ticket. As Peripheral Dynamics, Inc. (PDI) explains, their lotto ticket scanner uses elaborate image scanning to rapidly, accurately process and validate lottery tickets.

2. To Scan Identification (ID) Cards.

Like a credit card’s magnetic strip, the magnetic strip on ID cards stores up to 60 characters of your personal information. For this reason, ID scanner machines are commonly required to read the data held in your identification cards such as passports, driver’s licenses, and passports.

For instance, PDI’s passport scanner uses motion detection to scan and authenticate passports, and contains no moving parts to ensure the utmost reliability.

3. To Scan Barcodes.

According to PDI, barcodes store information visually, using a series of parallel lines that have different widths. Barcode scanners work by decoding these lines into numerical codes corresponding with specific products or entries in a company’s database.

When the ability to scan numerous items is required, such as in supermarket checkout lines, using barcodes is more convenient and time-saving than swiping cards with magnetic strips one at a time. Also, barcode errors are generally rare, while cards having magnetic strips sometimes need to be swiped repeatedly in order to be read. Due to the efficiency and speed that barcodes offer, they’re extremely popular in the retail industry, necessitating the use of barcode readers.

Smart card readers are not only used to scan the information on your credit card. They are also used for many other purposes, such as scanning lottery tickets, ID cards, and barcodes. This ensures the accurate and rapid processing of information in many different industries.