Your card terminal's mag stripe reader is going away, eventually

Older news than it sounds

Mastercard announced its plan to retire the magnetic stripe back in August 2021, not recently, but the actual dates on that plan are starting to arrive. The next one is 2027, which is coming up fast, and it’s a good excuse to know what’s actually changing versus what isn’t, especially if you’re due for a terminal refresh.

The actual dates

Here’s the real timeline Mastercard published, broken into what’s already happened and what hasn’t yet:

• Already done in most markets outside the U.S.: as of 2024, newly issued cards in regions where chip adoption was already standard, most of Europe for example, no longer require a mag stripe at all.
• 2027: mag stripes stop being mandatory on newly issued U.S. cards. Issuers can still put one on if they want, but it’s no longer required.
• 2029: Mastercard stops issuing any new U.S. or Canadian cards with a magnetic stripe at all, with one specific exception, prepaid debit cards keep the stripe for now.
• 2033: Mastercard expects the stripe to be essentially gone from circulation entirely, as the cards issued before 2029 reach the end of their normal three to five year lifespan and get replaced.

Two caveats worth knowing. First, this is Mastercard’s own policy, not law, and there’s no matching public commitment from Visa on the same schedule, so don’t assume your Visa-branded cards follow an identical timeline. Second, Mastercard hasn’t published a specific date by which terminals or ATMs need to stop reading stripes, only that it’s working with acquirers on the infrastructure side. If you’re expecting a hard terminal deadline to plan around, there isn’t one yet.

Why this is happening

The short version: chip and contactless payments have become the default way people actually pay, and the mag stripe, which has none of the security features EMV chips have, has become the weak point fraudsters go after when it still works as a fallback. Removing it entirely closes that gap for good.

What you need to do about it

For most merchants, nothing right now. If you bought your terminal any time after the October 2015 EMV liability shift, and at this point almost everyone has, it already reads chips and processes contactless payments without caring whether a card also has a stripe. A stripe disappearing from newly issued cards doesn’t break anything on your end. Your next hardware refresh, whenever that happens, will already be stripe-independent regardless of this timeline.

The one real exception is fuel dispensers. Gas station pumps lagged years behind general retail on EMV upgrades, partly because retrofitting a pump costs a lot more than swapping a countertop terminal, and a meaningful number of pumps nationally still rely on the stripe as their only card-reading method. If that’s your business, this isn’t a someday problem. It’s worth checking your pump hardware now rather than waiting for 2027 to force the issue.

Quick check for your business

• Everyday retail, restaurant, or service terminal bought after 2015: no action needed.
• Still running on an older non-EMV terminal for any reason: that’s a problem regardless of the stripe timeline, replace it now.
• Fuel dispensers or unattended kiosks: confirm EMV readiness directly, don’t assume.
• Planning a terminal or POS refresh in the next year or two: ask your provider whether anything about the new hardware depends on stripe compatibility. Generally it doesn’t, but confirm.

If you’re due for a refresh and want to make sure whatever you buy next is already built around chip and contactless rather than depending on a stripe, take a look at our hardware options.

Sources

• Mastercard, “Swiping left on magnetic stripes,” company announcement, August 2021
• Industry coverage of Mastercard’s 2024/2027/2029/2033 magnetic stripe phase-out timeline
• Reporting on EMV adoption lag at fuel dispensers