FakecreditcardWhat is a BIN?
The BIN (bank identification number) is the first part of a payment card number. The official name is IIN — issuer identification number — and the two terms mean the same thing. Every card number starts with one: the BIN is assigned to a card issuer, and the issuer fills in the remaining digits for each card it produces, ending with a check digit calculated with the Luhn algorithm.
The very first digit is the major industry identifier: 3 is travel and entertainment (American Express, Diners Club, JCB), 4 and 5 are banking and finance (Visa, Mastercard), and 6 is merchandising and banking (Discover, UnionPay, many Maestro ranges). The digits that follow narrow it down to a single bank and a single product — for example a bank's business debit card, its premium credit card, or a prepaid card it runs for a retailer.
6-digit and 8-digit BINs
For decades the BIN was six digits long. The pool of six-digit ranges ran short, so the 2017 revision of ISO/IEC 7812-1 lengthened the issuer identification number to eight digits, and Visa and Mastercard set April 2022 as the deadline for the industry to support 8-digit BINs. Since then a card number contains an 8-digit BIN, but many issuers still hold a whole 6-digit range and use the extra two digits to separate products within it.
In practice the first six digits are still enough to identify the bank and country for most cards, which is why most BIN lists — including the one behind this checker — are keyed on six digits. If you enter 7 or 8 digits, the checker looks up the 6-digit range they fall in. Systems that store card data should be ready for 8-digit BINs: the PCI Security Standards Council has updated its truncation guidance so that, for some card lengths, the first eight digits may be kept alongside the last four.
What a BIN lookup can and cannot tell you
| A BIN can tell you | A BIN cannot tell you |
|---|---|
| The card network (Visa, Mastercard, Amex…) | Who the cardholder is |
| The issuing bank or institution | Whether a specific card number exists |
| The issuing country | Whether a card is open, blocked or can be charged |
| Debit, credit or charge card; prepaid or not | Anything about the account or its limits |
| Product level (Classic, Gold, Platinum, Business…) | The expiry date or security code |
Only the issuing bank knows whether a card is real and usable, and it only answers that question inside a payment authorization. That is why a BIN checker is a reference tool, not a way to test cards: it describes the range a number belongs to, nothing more.
What BIN data is used for
- Payment routing. Payment providers read the BIN to decide which network to send a transaction to, whether a debit card can go over a local debit network, and which acquirer or currency setup gives the best approval rate and fees.
- Fraud screening. Risk rules compare the BIN country with the shopper's IP address and shipping country, flag prepaid cards on subscription sign-ups, or ask for 3-D Secure on certain products. A mismatch is a signal to review, not proof of fraud.
- Fees and reporting. Interchange differs between debit, credit and commercial cards, so finance teams use BIN data to explain processing costs and to split sales by card type or country.
- Checkout UX. As soon as a customer types the first digits, a form can show the right card logo, expect the right length (15 digits for Amex, 16 for most others) and ask for a 3- or 4-digit security code.
- Test data. Developers need numbers that start with a particular BIN to test routing tables, BIN-based rules and brand detection. After a lookup, the Generate test numbers with this BIN button opens the card generator with the BIN filled in; the numbers it creates pass the Luhn check but are not issued by any bank.
How to read the result
Network is the card scheme that routes the payment. Type is debit, credit or charge. Level is the product tier the network records for the range (for example Classic, Gold, Platinum, World, Business or Prepaid) — some ranges have no level in the data. Issuer is the bank or institution that owns the range; when the issuer has ten or more BINs in the data, it links to a bank page listing all of them. The phone number and website come from the dataset; check them against the bank's official site before relying on them.
BIN data changes: banks merge, sell portfolios and move ranges between products. Treat any single entry as a strong indication rather than a guarantee, and use the network's own BIN tables if you need authoritative data for production routing.
Frequently asked questions
What is a BIN checker?
A BIN checker looks up the first 6–8 digits of a payment card number — the bank identification number — in a BIN database and shows what those digits are registered to: the card network, the issuing bank, the country, the card type (debit, credit or prepaid) and often the product level. It does not look at the rest of the number.
Is it safe to type a card number into this BIN lookup?
Only the first 6 to 8 digits are used. If you paste a full number, the field is cut down to the first 8 digits before anything else happens. The lookup runs in your browser: it downloads a small data file named after the first 3 digits (for example /data/bin/411.json), so not even the full BIN is sent to our server. Nothing is stored.
Can a BIN lookup tell me if a card is valid or active?
No. A BIN only identifies the issuer and the product. Whether a particular card exists, is active or can be charged is known only to the issuing bank and is checked during a payment authorization. To check the format of a full number (length and Luhn check digit), use the card validator.
Why is my BIN not found?
The dataset covers about 375,000 six-digit BINs, but banks open new ranges all the time, and some ranges are private or reassigned. If a BIN is missing, the tool still shows the card network that the leading digits belong to.
What is the difference between a 6-digit and an 8-digit BIN?
ISO/IEC 7812-1 was revised in 2017 to lengthen the issuer identification number from 6 to 8 digits, and the major networks moved to 8-digit BINs by April 2022. Many issuers still use a whole 6-digit range, so the first 6 digits usually identify the bank; the extra two digits let a bank split a range into separate products. Our dataset is keyed on 6 digits.
Can I generate test card numbers for a BIN?
Yes. After a lookup, use Generate test numbers with this BIN. It opens the card generator with the BIN pre-filled, and creates Luhn-valid numbers for testing forms, routing rules and fraud filters. They are not real cards and any real payment with them is declined.
Related tools
Data source
BIN data: bin-list-data by Venelin Kochev (a lite version of binlookup.io), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Changes made by Fakecreditcard: issuer, brand and country names re-cased and standardized, spelling variants of the same issuer merged, malformed phone numbers and web addresses removed.