FABRICATION OF A HIGH RESOLUTION, LOW PROFILE CREDIT CARD READER AND CARD READER FOR TRANSMISSION OF DATA BY SOUND

摘要

A portable card reader (10) designed to be carried in a wallet or purse has an electromagnetic head that reads information from a magnetic strip (38) of a card (12) or information is read from the card (12) by an array of Hall sensors (42). In a further embodiment, the card reader uses a magnetic sensor (126) based on magnetoresistive sensing of magnetic transitions of a magnetic stripe (38), suitable for use with small, portable electronic devices. In each embodiment, the information read from the card (12) may be converted to a sequence of electronic burst of predetermined frequency, preferably in the audible or ultrasound range. The sound signals are output by a speaker to the microphone of a telephone. The signal is then transmitted over the telephone lines to a remote receiver. The receiver then converts the sound burst into signal pulses which can be read using the computer software of a conventional card reader.