Guard Your Cards - credit cards - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, August, 2000 by Ed Henry

CREDIT | Zap! The wrong kind of exposure can DISABLE YOUR ACCESS to cash and credit.

A ROUTINE medical exam can wipe out your access to cash and credit worldwide. A 60-year-old man learned that lesson the hard way when his doctor used magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose an inner-ear problem. After the procedure, the man discovered--one by one--that the cards in his wallet had been zapped into worthlessness.

His situation was a pain, but it could have been a lot worse. Say he was traveling abroad and had skipped the security of travelers checks, relying on his ATM for cash. To avoid an international incident, keep your cards away from strong magnetic fields and be sure they're working before you leave home. A scratch on the magnetic strip can disarm it, too.

To protect your cards, avoid wallets and pocketbooks with magnetic clasps. (Stories about eel-skin wallets disabling cards are nonsense--unless you have an eel-skin wallet with a magnetic clasp.) Don't put cards back to back. That can destroy the magnetic coding, as can hotel key cards that come in contact with your credit or ATM card. And don't send your wallet through an x-ray scanner at the airport. The rays won't hurt your cards, but the magnetic field of the conveyor's motor can.