Payments glossary · Standards
BIN (Bank Identification Number)
A BIN (bank identification number), also called an issuer identification number (IIN), is the first six or eight digits of a payment card number. It identifies the card's issuer and product, including its brand, country and type.
How BIN works
Card numbers follow the ISO/IEC 7812 numbering standard, and the leading digits identify the issuer; Visa card numbers start with 4, for example. To increase the supply of numbers the standard moved from six-digit to eight-digit issuer identifiers. Visa's rules now define a BIN as either a six-digit identifier licensed to an issuer before 22 April 2022 or an eight-digit identifier, and existing six-digit ranges remain in use alongside the newer eight-digit ones.
Card schemes maintain BIN attributes, such as the funding source (debit, credit or prepaid), product, issuer name, country and currency, and acquirers and data providers pass this information on in BIN tables. Merchants and PSPs use it to route transactions to the best acquirer for the card's country, review or block cards from high-fraud regions, show the correct card brand at checkout, spot prepaid cards on subscription sign-ups, apply commercial-card pricing or surcharges where permitted, and analyse approval rates by issuer.
The term is also used on the issuing side. Companies launching their own cards often work with a BIN sponsor, a licensed issuer that holds the card scheme membership and provides BIN ranges for the programme, while the company handles the product and the customer relationship.