Introduction

Magnetic Stripes and Barcodes are incredible ways to add security functionality to your ID cards. While creating your ID Card in the Badge Maker, you'll see a "Security" button on the left side of your screen which will show you the different security functionalities available when you click it.

It's important to know what type of Barcode or Magnetic stripe coding formats your current security system requires before making your ID Card Template.

Barcodes

1. Open the Badge Maker and select the card you wish to add a barcode to or create a new card from scratch.
2. Click on the "Security" button on the left side of your screen, then click "Add Barcode".
3. The bar-code will automatically appear on your card. This bar code image can be resized, rotated and moved around the card to your liking.
4. On the left side of the screen, you'll see the "Customize Security" Panel. If not, click on the Barcode element in your ID design and it should appear.
5. There are five popular bar-code formats to choose from:

   1. Default Code 128 - Up to 32 Alphanumeric Characters

   2. Code 29 - Up to 20 Alphanumeric Characters
   3. PDF417 - Up to 100 Alphanumeric Characters
   4. Data Matrix - Up to 75 Alphanumeric Characters
   5. UPC-A - Up to 11 Characters, Numbers only
6. Select the format that is compatible with your current system and needs.
7. Input the required and relevant data to the ID Card you are currently making in the "Input Data" field. 
   1. If you are making multiple ID cards, you can insert a smart field into the "Input Data" field and bulk upload ID details, photos and barcode input data!

You've just added a Barcode!

Potential Extra Step:

If the input data has more characters or exceeds the limit the barcode format allows, there are many free solutions online to help you shorten the code into the necessary format. If you are required to do this step, download the shortened and encoded barcode as an image and upload it into your ID Design.

Magnetic Stripes

You can choose to have data encoded into a High Coercivity magnetic stripe for a variety of access and data management uses.

1. Open the Badge Maker and select the card you wish to add a magnetic strip to or create a new card from scratch.
2. Click the "Security" button on the left side of the screen while designing your ID card. The security tab will pop out and at the bottom of the tab, you'll see "Magnetic Stripe Encoding" with a toggle switch to it's right. Click the toggle switch to activate the magnetic stripe and 3 track input fields will appear below it. 
3. You will also notice, the Back Side of the card work-space displays the magnetic stripe bar where you can design around it. Any portion of elements overlapping the magnetic stripe area will be ignored by our printer.
4. You will be allowed to edit the three available magnetic stripe data tracks:
   1. Track 1: Supports up to 78 alphanumeric characters.
   2. Track 2: Supports 39 numeric-only characters.
   3. Track 3: Supports 106 numeric-only characters.
5. Input the relevant data into the corresponding track.
   1. If you're making multiple ID cards, you can add a smart field to each track and upload all of the ID details, photos, magnetic stripe data, etc. into IDCreator and the Badge Maker will generate all of the ID Cards for you!

You've just added a magnetic stripe to your ID card!

Please note: Since magnetic stripe alpha characters can only be UPPERCASE, any lowercase letters will automatically be converted to uppercase when encoded to your card. The incremental fee for printing the magnetic card with encoding will automatically be included in the card price when you add your customized ID to your shopping cart.