Yes, this is how it works with all major credit cards as well as many gift cards. You can also find ISO/IEC 7813, the track data standard, on Wikipedia. However, if you're thinking of programming some kind of payment engine, I urge you to carefully research the security and liability issues you are likely to encounter.

thanks, no - no interest just figure this looks simple enough to add as a extra layer of validation before sending card data over the wire...

This example, looks pretty straight forward: https://sites.google.com/site/abapexamples/javascript/luhn-v...