Mastercard says it is phasing out the use of magnetic stripes – that black strip on the back of credit cards – as soon as 2024.

       This would begin in regions where chip cards are already widely used, such as Europe.

       “By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes, which leaves a long runway for the remaining partners who still rely on the technology to phase in chip card processing,” the financial service firm said in a blogpost.

       It explained the decision was driven by the decline in magnetic stripes payments in favour of chip-based payments, which now accounted for 86% of face-to-face card transactions globally.

       “While changes in how we pay and process payments have typically taken years to become ubiquitous, the pace of digital transformation accelerated rapidly during the pandemic,” it stated.

       In the first quarter of 2021, Mastercard recorded one billion more contactless transactions compared to the same period in 2020. In the second quarter of 2021, 45% of all in-person checkout transactions globally were contactless.

       In its New Payments Index global survey, two-thirds of respondents also said they tried a new payment method they would not have tried under normal circumstances.

       Magnetic strips have had quite a long run, introduced in the early 1960’s and attributed to tech giant IBM, which figured out how to encode card information onto magnetic tape laminated to the back of credit cards.