BIN Generator will help you to solve this question. You can use BIN Checker right away, but we also offer you to understand how it works. Sometimes we need to figure out the name of the bank that has issued the card, but we have only the card’s number.

It’s easy to find out everything about the issuing network if we have the card in our hands, but sometimes we’ve only got a number. What do we know about a card number and what kind of additional information is hidden in it?

The Bank card number explained

The card number’s length (the number of digits) mostly ranges from 12 to 19 digits. The first six digits of the whole number are the IIN, or “issuer identification number” (also known as the BIN, or “bank identification number”).

These numbers identify the institution that issued the card.

The first digit of the IIN is the MII, or “Major Industry Identifier”. It means this digit identifies the major industry of the card issuer. Next digits (except the last one) are individual account identifier. The last number is a check digit, which is calculated according to the Luhn algorithm.

Why Would a Merchant Need to Use BINList?

E-commerce merchants use the credit card BIN list for validation of online purchases.

Here's how it works:

If the credit card's BIN indicates a bank in country A, while the customer's billing address is in country B, the transaction may need to go through additional checks before approval.

Many merchants use the bin list for risk scoring and risk alerting. As I mentioned, with BINlist, you can quickly determine card type, such as debit, credit or prepaid, and country of issue.

For example:

The updated card issuer BIN list can help you recognize prepaid cards during the eCommerce checkout process and prevent their use for recurring transactions.

Another example:

Let's say that you have a new order in your eCommerce online store.

By doing a BIN number search in the binlist, you have concluded that this specific card is debit, issued in Nigeria. This situation is an instant alert for a merchant about potential suspicious order.

From there, you can either inspect the order more closely or reject it to be safe.

In short:

Most Fintech startups and eCommerce merchants were not able to gain access to official BIN/MPE tables until now.

Feel free to use the latest BIN list database to simplify your day-to-day activities and to easily distinguish from different Mastercard products (credit / debit cards) on your payment checkout section.

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What is BIN Lookup and BIN search?

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