薄而灵活的卡用于自动控制对商品或服务的访问，如公共交通、高速公路收费系统、停车场、代金券和储值。 对于这些应用，数据可以由使用各种记录技术的机器写入和/或读取:磁条、光学字符识别、条形码等。 ISO/IEC 15457-2:20 07规定了薄柔性卡在卡生命周期的两个点上的磁条和编码特性: 在装入发卡设备时；在向公众发布的问题上。

Thin flexible cards are used to automate the controls for access to goods or services such as mass transit, highway toll systems, car parks, vouchers and stored value. For these applications, data can be written and/or read by machines using various recording techniques: magnetic stripe, optical character recognition, bar code, etc. ISO/IEC 15457-2:2007 specifies the magnetic stripe and encoding characteristics of thin flexible cards at two points in the card's life cycle:

• at the point of loading into the card-issuing equipment;
• at the point of issue to the public.