What is a virtual credit card BIN?
A complete credit card number consists of 13-19 digits. The first 6 digits are called “Bank Identification Number”, or “BIN” for short. Through these 6 digits, you can identify information such as the country, issuer, currency, and card organization of this card. In the process of using various virtual credit cards, physical credit cards, and prepaid cards, it is necessary to check the card BIN number to check the specific information of this card to confirm whether this card meets business needs.
As the number of cards issued around the world increases, 6-digit card BIN resources are becoming increasingly tight. The International Organization for Standardization ISO requires the number of card BINs to be expanded from 6 digits to 8 digits, and VISA and Mastercard promise to launch an 8-digit card BIN in April 2022.
Example of card BIN query information analysis
Here is the BIN 428813 virtual credit card as an example. The following are the search results:
- BIN: 428813
- Card Brand: VISA
- Issuing Bank: A card issuer. In addition to a bank, the issuer can also be a non-bank financial institution
- Card Type: Credit, other types include Debit cards, Charge cards, Deferred debit cards, etc.
- Card Level: Common VISA levels include Visa Top-Up Card, Visa Travel Money, Visa Purchasing, Visa Classic, Visa Signature, Visa Gold, Visa Business, Visa Corporate, Visa Platinum, Visa Infinite, etc. Common Mastercard card levels include Standard, Gold, Platinum, Titanium, World, etc.
- Iso Country Name: International Organization for Standardization country name, United States
- Iso Country A2: Alpha-2 codes for International Organization for Standardization countries, for example, China’s A2 code is “CN” and the US is “US”
- Iso Country A3: Alpha-3 codes for country names in the International Organization for Standardization. For example, China’s A3 code is “CHN” and the US is “USA”
- Iso Country Numner: International Organization for Standardization’s digital code for countries, such as “156” for China and “840” for the United States
- Bank website: the card issuer’s website
The exact type or grade of a virtual card should not be determined by a common name but should be identified and confirmed based on the detailed information obtained by querying the BIN.
Some prepaid cards or gift cards will be reported as “Gift” or “Prepaid” in the Card Level. Gift cards, and prepaid cards usually have the characteristics of not being registered, cannot be recharged, can’t be used once, and cannot detect the cardholder’s credit history. In some postpaid services, such as online subscriptions, if using a prepaid gift card, users can completely refuse to pay subsequent subscription fees after the first month of using the subscription due to insufficient balance in the card and the inability to overdraft, causing them a “loss” from a merchant’s point of view. Or there is a problem with the funds to buy a prepaid gift card, which may result in anonymous fraud cases. This is why the use of prepaid cards and gift cards is difficult to accept in certain consumption scenarios, and some payment tools, such as PayPal, no longer support prepaid card binding.
Some cards generated in electronic wallets, such as the BIN 559900 virtual card generated in the Russian YooMoney digital wallet, are designed to protect the user’s physical wallet card from being stolen and can be canceled at any time. This type of virtual card is also a type of prepaid card. General shopping is OK, but in some other online payment scenarios they may not be accepted.
Regarding the two types of card levels, Business and Corporate, the former favors the payment of small company employees, and the latter favors the financial management of large enterprises. Essentially, there is not much difference. For example, the Payoneer prepaid card was upgraded from Prepaid to Bussiness Prepaid in order to optimize the payment experience, and later upgraded to Bussiness Debit.
For example, virtual cards such as BIN 485913 and BIN 428813 are credit card types. Online payments using this type of card can be simply assumed that the merchant feels that this user is trustworthy and can maintain a long-term payment and purchase relationship, so they are more likely to be accepted by the merchant. It is better if it is a Bussiness level or Corporate level card.
So what tool is used to check virtual credit card BIN information?
If you search for keywords such as “bank card BIN search” or “BIN checker” directly on Google, you will usually find some “spam websites”. These spam websites have the function of searching for card BIN, but they are usually full of advertisements, and the user experience is very poor. The key point is that the results found are not necessarily accurate. These spam websites are some individual webmasters that connect to a cheap or even free card BIN database API and then use SEO technology to rank the top of the search results page to earn Google Adsense advertising fees. This kind of search tool site itself is nothing. The downside is that their card BIN database is not necessarily accurate or not updated in a timely manner. This may be misleading for querying users.
However, I paid for the most accurate card BIN search tool database in the world, and the data is updated every month, so the card BIN information I queried is very accurate.