With the advancement of technology, both bank cards and smartphones have become essential parts of our daily lives. You've likely heard the common claim that placing your bank card next to your phone can cause the card to burn out.
Since mobile phones were first introduced to Iran, they have brought with them various beliefs. Recently, many people have come to believe that mobile phone waves can cause credit cards—such as bank cards, metro and bus cards, and even driver’s licenses and national ID cards—to stop working. In this article, we will examine this claim scientifically and logically to determine how true it is.
As we all know, bank cards store our personal information on a black magnetic strip in an encoded format. These strips are made from iron particles that can be damaged if exposed to strong magnetic waves. But the real question is: how much of a magnetic field is required to damage a bank card?
Every electronic device generates a magnetic field, which is measured in gauss. Magnetic fields or forces like those created by a mobile phone or a magnet are measured using this unit. For one object’s magnetic field to affect another, it must be stronger than the magnetic field of the object being affected. This means a stronger field is needed to interfere with or corrupt an object (similar to the effect of interference).
Credit cards follow the same principle. The magnetic field of credit cards, which have a magnetic strip, will only cause the card to stop working if exposed to a strong magnetic field. Research shows that these credit cards and the magnetic strips that store their data must be exposed to a magnetic field of 1500 gauss in order to be damaged. Interestingly, MRI machines generate magnetic fields of about 15,000 gauss, and there have been reports of people whose credit cards were deactivated after undergoing an MRI scan.
However, mobile phone waves only produce a magnetic field of around 1.2 to 10 milligauss, which is roughly 150,000 times smaller than the magnetic field required to damage a card. So, you can safely store your fuel card, bank card, or any other credit cards next to your mobile phone without any worries.
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