regexcredit-card

Regular Expression for Credit Card Track Data


Are there any known regular expressions out there to validate credit card track 1 and track 2 data?

EDIT:

From Wikipedia:

The information on track 1 on financial cards is contained in several formats: A, which is reserved for proprietary use of the card issuer, B, which is described below, C-M, which are reserved for use by ANSI Subcommittee X3B10 and N-Z, which are available for use by individual card issuers:

Track 1, Format B:

Track 2: This format was developed by the banking industry (ABA). This track is written with a 5-bit scheme (4 data bits + 1 parity), which allows for sixteen possible characters, which are the numbers 0-9, plus the six characters : ; < = > ? . The selection of six punctuation symbols may seem odd, but in fact the sixteen codes simply map to the ASCII range 0x30 through 0x3f, which defines ten digit characters plus those six symbols. The data format is as follows:


Solution

  • I was about to post the same link on regular-expressions.info, for verifying the cc number part of the track.

    Now, comes the tricky part. Track data varies in format between card issuers and even card readers. For example the 'separator' characters aren't always the same. Same applies to the end 'sentinels'.

    Wikipedia gives a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card

    With track2, the card number is followed by an '=' (or occasionally a 'D'). Then you have expiry date as MMDD. After that, Track2 has 'discretionary data', which could be anything.

    I wouldn't worry too much after this point. If it's track data, you'll be pretty sure by now. I guess it depends on what you are aiming to do with the data.

    Anyway, for Track2 you could do a lot worse than adding [=D][0-9]{4} instead of the $ at the end of the cc regex:

    ^(?:4[0-9]{12}(?:[0-9]{3})?|5[1-5][0-9]{14}|6(?:011|5[0-9][0-9])[0-9]{12}|3[47][0-9]{13}|3(?:0[0-5]|[68][0-9])[0-9]{11}|(?:2131|1800|35\d{3})\d{11})[=D][0-9]{4}
    

    For track1, you could do something similar ... Track1 contains more variable data, so can be a touch more complicated.

    Good luck!