PURPOSE: This article provides information on what a BIN check is and some of its uses.



TABLE OF CONTENTS





1. What is a BIN?


A BIN (Bank Identification Number) is the first 6–8 digits of a payment card number (e.g. debit, credit, prepaid, or charge card). It uniquely identifies the issuing bank or financial institution that provided the card to the cardholder.


BINs are used during transaction authorisation to route the request to the correct issuer and apply relevant rules (fraud checks, interchange fees, acceptance restrictions, etc.). In short, the BIN is the identifier that links a payment card to its issuing institution and is fundamental to how card transactions are routed and authorised.



2. What is a BIN check?


Merchants have the option to perform a standalone check on a payment card's first six digits, known as BIN (Bank Identification Number). The bank identification number uniquely identifies the financial institution issuing the card. 



APEXX will return the following data points:

  • Issuer name
  • Issuer country
  • Card scheme (e.g. Visa/Mastercard)
  • Card funding type (debit/credit)
  • Card brand 


This data can then be used by the merchant for further processing decisions. Examples include:


  • To identify cards that merchants can legally levy a processing fee/surcharge on
  • To identify cards that do not require Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
  • To reject the card if certain conditions are not met (e.g. if the issuing country is different from the cardholder's address)


 NOTE 

Please contact the Implementations Management for onboarding merchants or Relationship Management teams for live merchants, for more details on how to enable the BIN check service for your organisation.