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I've been playing around with androids NFC capabilities and scanning the data off of my credit cards

The card holder name I get from the card is in the form

Smith/John

Whereas the name on my physical card is like so 

John Smith

Does anyone know if it's possible to grab the card holder name that's on the card? The one that's used to make online payments. Can the name with the slash be used in that form as well?

Michael Roland
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Scott
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1 Answers1

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Both, the name that you read from the card and the name that's printed on the card are infact the same. The printed name is typically printed {FIRST NAME}{SPACE}{LAST NAME} whereas the card holder name field in the card's data structures (e.g. mag-stripe track data) is always encoded as {LAST NAME}/{FIRST NAME}. So to get the name printed on the card you can simply split the string at the "/" (slash) to get the first name and last name fields. You can then re-arrange those fields in whatever form you need.

Btw. note that all major brands committed to removing the name information from the data structures readable through the contactless interface. Thus, with future cards, reading the card holder's name through NFC will not be possible any more.

Michael Roland
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    Wheter the name comes with the NFC track data is dependent on the market (US/Europe/etc). In the US it was removed a few good years ago and you can only read "Valued Cardholder". Expect all card issuers to removed due to privacy concerns. – barbazoo Oct 07 '13 at 12:00
  • When i applied for my Debit card, the bank asked what name i would like to have on the credit card. I assumed i could have put anything there (ie; Johnny Smith), which would then be be different and not rearrangeable from the card holder name stored internally. Does this sound correct? Or am i able to make payments online using Johnny Smith AND John Smith? – Scott Oct 07 '13 at 21:33