Update on Gift Cards in Lizzy

Within the past few months, we’ve heard from a number of customers that had bought new gift cards that weren’t working properly with Lizzy. Previously, we have not needed to specify gift card formatting, as gift card providers were using the same formatting as that used for credit cards. We’re not sure why, but that process seems to have changed recently. We’ve seen gift cards from numerous companies with formatting unlike any we’ve ever seen used for gift cards before. The main issue is that there are special characters being inserted into the magnetic stripe data (such as dashes and semi-colons). However, we’ve pinpointed the exact formula that needs to be used in order for Lizzy to read the gift cards properly.

Please ask your gift card provider to ensure they are using the following format: %B12345678^.

If you’re used to reading the layout of a credit card swipe, that’s exactly what we’re looking for here. When a credit card is swiped, the track data always starts with %B, and is followed by the actual gift card number (in this case, the gift card number is 12345678). This is followed by an end sentinel, a carat (^). It does not matter how many digits are in the gift card number, nor does it matter what gift card number you start with, as long as you are not reusing gift card numbers that were previously used in Lizzy (as Lizzy will not be able to treat those as separate cards). If your gift card provider follows this format exactly, it does not matter what else is contained in the magnetic stripe data; Lizzy will be able to read your gift card successfully.

For more information on gift cards and Lizzy, please see our blog post here.

We have also partnered with Plastic Resource to have them produce gift cards for Lizzy customers that meet the exact specifications needed to work with Lizzy. For more information or to order gift cards, please use the link here: http://www.printingplastic.com/nizeXinc