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03 Guides
The BIN decides whether the merchant accepts the card.
It is the most decisive parameter of a payment card, and the least explained. It sits in the first digits of the number, it appears on no statement, and yet it is what explains why a card goes through at one merchant and fails at the next.
In brief
The BIN is the first six to eight digits of a card. They tell the merchant the payment network, the country of issue and the product type — prepaid, debit or credit. A merchant that accepts only domestic cards, or that refuses prepaid, makes its decision on those digits alone, before it even checks the balance.
What the BIN encodes
- Length
- 6 to 8 digits
- Network
- yes
- Country of issue
- yes
- Product type
- yes
- Bank name
- the issuer
What the merchant sees
At the moment of payment, the merchant queries a BIN database and gets three pieces of information before any authorisation: which network handles the card, in which country it was issued, and which type it is. It can refuse on those criteria alone, without the transaction ever reaching the issuer. That is why some declines are instant and appear nowhere in the card's history.
Prepaid, debit, credit
The type counts as much as the country. A prepaid card allows no overdraft: the payment goes through if the balance is enough, and fails otherwise. Merchants that need a guarantee rather than an immediate payment — hotel deposits, car hire, subscriptions with deferred billing — often refuse prepaid for that reason, and it is a rational decision on their part, not a whim.
The country of issue
A US hosting provider may accept only US cards. A European platform may require a card from the European Economic Area for compliance reasons. An Asian merchant may refuse both. None of these refusals is arbitrary: they come from regulatory constraints, anti-fraud policies or acquiring contracts. Choosing the right issuing region is the only lever the cardholder has.
Three regions, one balance
We issue in three regions: European for the euro, US for the dollar, Hong Kong for the Hong Kong dollar. One account can carry all three cards, funded from the same balance. Conversion happens at the moment of payment, at the interbank rate plus our published margin. Since the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar within a narrow band, the value of an HKD card tracks that of a USD card closely: what changes is the issuing region, not purchasing power.
What choosing a BIN does not do
Choosing an issuing region is not choosing a bank. A card bears the name of the institution that issues it, and no third party can issue in the name of a bank it does not act for. This matters because the question "can I have a card in the name of such-and-such bank?" comes up constantly, and because the sites that answer yes are, without exception, scams.
Checking a BIN yourself
Public BIN databases let you check the country and the type of a card from its first digits. They are useful for understanding a decline after the fact, and for checking that a card you received matches what was advertised. Their quality is uneven and their data sometimes out of date — but on the country and the product type, they are rarely wrong.
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