BuckID is in the process of transitioning to include magnetic strips and contact chips in all university identification cards. Credit: Brooke Tacsar
BuckID has begun its initial stages of transitioning all university identification cards to include both magnetic stripes and contact chips.
Joshua Bodnar, the director of BuckID, said this initiative, called BuckID 3.0, is primarily for security purposes. The data on a magnetic stripe is directly within the black band on the card and is easily accessible through equipment such as a skimmer – a device hidden within or disguised as a card reader.
Cards with chips are encrypted, so their data requires a key to access its information, Bodnar said.
“Long term, it’s a more secure technology, which is why you see payment cards [and] credit cards moving in that direction,” Bodnar said. “And then just from a user experience, it’s a lot easier to go up to the door and [tap].”
All new BuckIDs and card readers are built to support both magnetic stripes and contact chips, but eventually, Ohio State plans to phase out magnetic stripes entirely, Bodnar said.
“We still have magnetic stripe readers out there,” Bodnar said. “We’re just further down the road of transitioning ours to either multitech, or we know what our plan would be once we’re ready to phase over completely to tap.”
Ohio State does not have a fixed number of years for how long it will take for all campus card readers and BuckIDs to only use contact chips, but conversations with academic buildings and administrative departments to coordinate potential costs and a time frame began this academic year.
Such conversations include questions such as how many card readers would need to be replaced to only be tap-accessible within each building, further determining how much it will cost and how long it will take for each building to make a full transition, Bodnar said.
“For the most part, the perimeter doors of residence halls, some dining facilities and newer academic buildings support tap, but for the general student — if you don’t live on campus — there’s probably not many places you would use your card that are ready to use a tap card,” Bodnar said.
All new BuckIDs, including those of all current first-year students, contain both magnetic stripes and contact chips, Bodnar said. Students who wish to add a chip to their card must go to the BuckID office and pay $5 to trade in their existing card and receive a new one.
Bodnar said the replacement fee for a lost BuckID was increased – from $20 to $30 – this year to pay for the institution’s transition to tap, but students with a BuckID that does not already have a contact chip on it must still pay the upgrade fee.
Until the university is ready to complete a full transition to only tap, upperclassmen should only pay for a BuckID with a contact chip if it is convenient for them, Bodnar said.
There are some limitations to contact chips, including permanently damaging the card by keeping it on the back of your phone in a cardholder, Bodnar said. This can cause the card to overheat and demagnetize.
Natalia Cymbal, a second-year in mechanical engineering, encountered this issue when she upgraded to a BuckID with a contact chip, and it unexpectedly stopped working. She was told by the BuckID office it was because she kept it on the back of her phone.
“It’s convenient if it were able to be on the back of my phone because my phone is always in my front pocket,” Cymbal said.
Another restriction with tap includes not being able to punch a hole into the BuckID’s perimeter for a lanyard, Bodnar said.
“We have other things they can buy that they can put the card in,” Bodnar said. “If we put a hole in it, then the chip you just paid for won’t work anymore because we broke the band for the antenna.”
Once BuckIDs and card readers that support contact chips have been distributed across the university, BuckID will begin looking at a mobile ID for students, Bodnar said.
“This is what a lot of schools are starting to move towards,” Bodnar said. “We have a lot of infrastructure work that has to happen before we could get to a mobile credential.”
