Issue country based BINs

[Youssf]

When I was looking into my Metal cards BIN I found out that the BIN does belong to some Ukraine bank account and the more updates ones show Revolut Ireland and/or UK.

Is it not better if Revolut started to issue per country a local BIN on the MasterCard and Visa cards?

That way it would be easier and more safe for verification purposes too, as I can imagine that some merchants will flag your card payment if you are from but use a card or even a card

So I wonder what Revolut needs to arrange to make this happen and what problems could occur.

[Frank]

Online BIN databases are not reliable.

Revolut does issue cards with correct county BINs. It might take some time until changes in BIN directories propagate. So yes, there’s sometimes a period (couple of months) where some merchants rely on outdated data. Not all payment service providers update BIN data in real-time.

Also, when trying out online BIN checkers, find one that accepts 8 digits. It should be more precise. I can see that with my own card: 6 digits show Ukraine, 8 digits show my correct region.

With Mastercard, you can also check Mastercards official BIN range table.

Another relatively reliable way of testing is Apple. Apple relies on cards for DRM. They won’t accept a card from a different country for media purchases with country restrictions or Apple Pay. The region of the card must match the region of your Apple ID. I found in the past that Apple recognised cards correctly even when other merchants did not (yet).

Another hint is DCC: if your card would have an actually wrong country BIN, you’d face much more prompts for DCC than you probably do. The BIN checker I used tells me the card is a UK card. But at airports, there’s no prompt to have me pay in GBP. The online BIN checker is wrong, the airport POS terminal identifies the card correctly and wants me to pay in EUR.

PS: This topic is as old as Revolut itself. You can find plenty of informations about it with a quick search in this forum.

[Eudes]

If you use digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) they also generate a different BIN and since it relays on the token for the transaction was a validation, the card number used on it is basically just for compatibility with really old terminals.

Since some terminals print the card BIN + 4 last digits on the receipt, checking their BIN is always funny, on MasterCard it’s always somewhere distant like Hawaii, Denmark, USA.
But my Brazilian Visa is just the real issuer BIN.

I prefer even to use Apple Pay since like is visible on the image above, using a card allows the seller to get the client name (and also a few os the last transactions) and using a digital wallet it only provides a transaction token and a virtual card number that if leaked won’t allow any transaction going thru.

[Youssf]

Thanks for explaining, I did find several posts here indeed but it still was not clear to me.

But there is no site/place where you can find the actual BIN list updated right?

In the cases my payments get rejected it has probably to do with the merchant using the old lists or something.

Regarding the DCC it always shows EUR payments and not GBP, but I do get the English as standard selected language on the POS terminal despite living in The Netherlands. Would be great if this can be updated somehow.

[Frank]

You can find Mastercard’s official table online.

You won’t find free and super reliable third party databases online, payment service providers sell this to merchants as part of their IP. Who‘s going to pay for updating it constantly?

Rejections based on this are not that common. They happen when new fintechs start, when major changes in card programs occur. And the situation is usually temporary and everything is settled in a couple months. Traditional banks usually test new card ranges for maybe half a year in advance, so the customer won’t notice any of this. But fintechs roll out stuff quicker.

It’s sometimes harder to convince battle ships like Amazon that it’s their fault something isn’t working.

[Veda.Ramesh]

@Frank @Eudes Thank you for sharing this insightful information with us.

@Youssf Hope this helped.

Veda | Community Team