案例库 · 财务与会计 · 战略决策 · 1960-2020s
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
IBM gave away the magnetic stripe and made the credit card global
IBM standardized the magnetic stripe, offered it free and unpatented, and the world's banks adopted one card format that worked everywhere.
IBM
那一手
In the early 1960s, credit card commerce was physical. Each transaction used a tiny printing press to record a card's raised letters and numbers onto pressure-sensitive paper with carbon copies — insecure, slow and prone to error. Airlines and banks wanted it faster and safer.
IBM had the answer. Engineer Forrest Parry wanted to attach a stripe of magnetized tape to a plastic card for a more secure identity card for CIA officials. When he could not reliably stick the stripe on, his wife, ironing clothes nearby, suggested using the iron to melt it onto the card.
IBM moved the technology to the public. In 1969 it spearheaded the establishment of standards for magnetic stripe technology, led by project manager Jerome Svigals. The approach IBM had helped develop was adopted as a US standard in 1969 and as an international standard two years later, enabling mag stripe cards to be used anywhere in the world. IBM did the work for free and did not patent its machine-readable card.
The economics ran in IBM's favor: the card format, point-of-sale terminals, data networks and mainframe computers together created the global credit card industry, and by 1990 every dollar IBM spent developing the stripe had netted roughly $1,500 in computer sales.
为什么管用
- The old carbon-paper system was insecure, slow and error-prone
- A standard stripe let the same card be read by any bank's terminal anywhere
- Not patenting the format removed the barrier that would have stalled adoption
- The card boom drove demand for the computers and machines IBM sold
可以搬走什么
Standardizing a format you do not own can be the most profitable move: make the card approach universal and you own the market for the systems that run on it.
后来呢
For over three decades the magnetic stripe was the dominant mechanism for authorizing card transactions and verifying identity. Only 16% of US families had a bank card in 1970, but more than two-thirds did by 1998, and over $7 trillion in card transactions were processed in 2018. Chip (EMV) cards began replacing the stripe for security, but the magnetic stripe remains in place on most cards because of its low cost and the huge global base of existing stripe readers.
资料来源
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