Scan a payment card with the camera and get its number, expiry date and cardholder name back as a typed result. Recognition runs fully on the device using the platform OCR engines: Vision on iOS and ML Kit on Android. There is no third party camera plugin, no cloud service and no network access.

Supported networks: Visa, Mastercard, American Express.

Highlights

• One line integration. CardScannerPage.show(context) opens a ready screen and returns a CardScanResult.
• Bring your own UI. CardScannerView renders the camera preview and lets you draw anything on top with overlayBuilder.
• Robust recognition. Luhn check, BIN detection, repair of common OCR confusions (O vs 0, I vs 1, S vs 5), and multi frame voting so a single misread never leaks into the result.
• Configurable fields. Decide which fields are required, which are nice to have, and how long to wait for them.
• Static images too. CardScanner.scanImage(bytes) recognizes a card in a photo from the gallery.
• Privacy by design. Frames never leave the native layer. Only recognized strings and bounding boxes cross the platform channel. toString() on results masks the number.

Install

flutter pub add flutter_card_scanner_plus

iOS

Add a camera usage description to ios/Runner/Info.plist:

<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>The camera is used to scan your payment card.</string>

Minimum deployment target is iOS 15.

Android

Nothing to configure. The plugin declares the CAMERA permission and requests it at runtime. Minimum SDK is 24 (Android 7.0). The ML Kit text recognition model is bundled with the app, so scanning works offline and does not depend on Google Play Services being up to date.

Quick start

import 'package:flutter_card_scanner_plus/flutter_card_scanner_plus.dart';

final card = await CardScannerPage.show(context);
if (card != null) {
  print(card.formattedNumber);   // 4242 4242 4242 4242
  print(card.brand);             // CardBrand.visa
  print(card.formattedExpiry);   // 12/28
  print(card.cardholderName);    // JOHN A SMITH (may be null)
}

CardScannerPage shows a full screen scanner with a card shaped frame, a torch toggle and a close button. It pops with the result as soon as the scan is complete, or with null if the user dismisses it.

Custom UI

Use CardScannerController and CardScannerView when the default page does not fit your design. The controller is a ValueNotifier<CardScannerState>, so it works with ValueListenableBuilder or any state management you already use.

class ScanScreen extends StatefulWidget {
  const ScanScreen({super.key});

  @override
  State<ScanScreen> createState() => _ScanScreenState();
}

class _ScanScreenState extends State<ScanScreen> {
  final _controller = CardScannerController();

  @override
  void dispose() {
    _controller.dispose();
    super.dispose();
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return CardScannerView(
      controller: _controller,
      overlayBuilder: (context, state, cardRect) {
        // cardRect is where the card frame sits, in this widget's coordinates.
        return Stack(
          children: [
            Positioned.fromRect(
              rect: cardRect,
              child: DecoratedBox(
                decoration: BoxDecoration(
                  border: Border.all(
                    color: state.isComplete ? Colors.green : Colors.white,
                    width: 2,
                  ),
                  borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(12),
                ),
              ),
            ),
            if (state.result.hasNumber)
              Positioned(
                left: 0,
                right: 0,
                top: cardRect.bottom + 24,
                child: Text(
                  state.result.formattedNumber!,
                  textAlign: TextAlign.center,
                  style: const TextStyle(color: Colors.white, fontSize: 22),
                ),
              ),
          ],
        );
      },
    );
  }
}

CardScannerState gives you everything needed for live feedback:

Field	What it is
result	Aggregated CardScanResult, updated as fields get confirmed
lastFrame	Raw candidates from the most recent OCR frame, useful for "live" highlighting
isRunning, torchEnabled, error	Camera state

The view keeps the OCR region of interest in sync with the card frame automatically, so text outside the frame is ignored.

One shot scanning

final controller = CardScannerController();
final card = await controller.scanOnce(); // starts the camera, completes when done

Reusing the default overlay

CardFrameOverlay is exported, so you can place it inside your own builder and add controls around it:

overlayBuilder: (context, state, cardRect) => Stack(
  children: [
    CardFrameOverlay(state: state, cardRect: cardRect, hint: 'Hold steady'),
    Positioned(bottom: 40, left: 0, right: 0, child: MyCancelButton()),
  ],
),

Choosing which fields you need

ScanRequirements controls when a scan is considered complete.

CardScannerPage.show(
  context,
  requirements: const ScanRequirements(
    required: {CardField.number, CardField.expiry}, // wait for these
    preferred: {CardField.name},                     // wait briefly, then skip
    preferredTimeoutFrames: 12,                      // about 1.5 s
  ),
);

Preset	Required	Preferred	Use when
standard	number, expiry	name	Default. Fast, and the name is included when it is legible.
numberOnly	number	none	You only need the PAN.
full	number, expiry, name	none	The name is mandatory. Waits until it is recognized.
fast	number, expiry	none	Demos and tests. Accepts the first Luhn valid frame.

The number is always required. A field that is neither required nor preferred is still filled in when it happens to be recognized, but never delays completion.

Scanning a photo

final bytes = await pickedFile.readAsBytes();
final card = await CardScanner.scanImage(bytes);

A single image is a single frame, so no voting is applied. isComplete tells you whether the required fields were found.

The result

class CardScanResult {
  String? number;          // 4242424242424242
  CardBrand? brand;        // visa, mastercard, amex
  int? expiryMonth;        // 1..12
  int? expiryYear;         // 2028
  String? cardholderName;  // JOHN A SMITH
  bool isComplete;

  String? formattedNumber; // 4242 4242 4242 4242 (4-6-5 for Amex)
  String? maskedNumber;    // •••• 4242
  String? last4;
  String? formattedExpiry; // 12/28
  bool isExpired({DateTime? now});
}

toString() prints the masked number only, so results are safe to log.

How it works

1. The native camera session renders into a Flutter texture and hands the same frame buffer to the OCR engine. There is no copy into Dart.
2. OCR runs only inside the region under the card frame, about eight times per second.
3. Recognized lines cross the platform channel as strings with normalized bounding boxes.
4. Dart merges fragments that sit on one visual row, then runs three parsers:
   • Number: candidate digit runs are repaired for OCR confusions, validated with Luhn, matched against Visa, Mastercard and Amex BIN ranges and length rules.
   • Expiry: MM/YY and MM/YYYY. When a card prints several dates (valid from, member since, valid thru) the latest one wins.
   • Name: upper case Latin lines without digits, filtered by a stop list of labels, tiers, networks and issuers, ranked by position relative to the number.
5. A sliding window vote confirms each field across frames. The scan completes when the required fields are confirmed and the preferred ones either arrived or timed out.

Everything in step 4 and 5 is plain Dart with no platform dependencies, and it is covered by unit tests with realistic OCR output, including misreads.

Security notes

• Camera frames are processed in memory and never written to disk, logged or transmitted.
• The package does not store the result anywhere. What you do with it is up to your app.
• This package is not a PCI DSS certified component. If your app is in scope for PCI, treat the scanned PAN as cardholder data from the moment it reaches your code.
• Consider hiding the scanner screen from screenshots and the app switcher in sensitive apps. That is intentionally left to the app, since the right behaviour differs per product.

Limitations

• Visa, Mastercard and American Express only. Other networks are rejected even when the number is Luhn valid.
• Cardholder name detection is heuristic. Embossed names on busy backgrounds, names with non Latin characters, and cards without a printed name will come back as null.
• Portrait orientation only.

Example

The example app shows the default page, the presets, a custom overlay with live per frame fields, and scanning from the gallery.

cd example
flutter run

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. If a card is not recognized, the most helpful report includes the raw OCR lines: run the example's custom overlay, which prints the candidates from each frame, and paste what you see (with the number partially masked).

Run the checks locally before opening a PR:

flutter analyze
flutter test

License

MIT. See LICENSE.