As of this month, about 96% of the world's largest businesses that accept credit and debit cards for payment have confirmed that they are no longer storing magnetic stripe information on their systems. Magnetic stripe data, also known as "track data" in industry parlance, includes the security verification codes on the back of each payment card as well as personal identification number (PIN) data from merchant payment systems. Older retail payment systems often captured and stored this data by default, without the merchants even being aware of that the information was being retained.By removing prohibited data from their payment systems, large and small businesses alike are denying hackers the data they covet for use in counterfeiting payment cards and are thus making their businesses and the payments system more secure.
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