Aiming at the complexity and the quality of IC cards
the location of code region and the segmentation of characters on IC card are studied. An on-line method of locating code region and segmentating characters on IC card are presented in the paper. It is based on the combination of the pre-testing location
the original position locating
the coarse region locating and the exact one. The location for different kinds of IC cards and different position of code regions on IC card are solved. The location method is discussed in detail. The multi-projection histograms are presented to segment the code. The experiment shows the result of the method is good.