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The card is facing the wrong side when swiped through the unit. The magnetic stripe should be facing the narrow side of the slot (away from the LED)

8. Why

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are there extra leading & ending characters when I read a card just

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encoded?

They are the standard sentinels required for each individual track based on the card type selected. The utility program will encode the sentinels with the card data for each track automatically. The sentinels should not be added to the card data for writing when encoding a card using standard a card type. (e.g. ISO, AAMVA, CA Old DMV)

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This can be done through re-configuring the reader that you are using with to reader the card data into the application software.

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