To maintain a secure and efficient payments ecosystem, Visa and Mastercard have decided to expand their Bank Identification Number or (BIN) mandate from 6 digits to 8 digits.
Over the years, the number of credit card issuers has grown exponentially, which has led to a shortage of BINs.
This article will break down why these changes are happening as well as when.
What Are BINs?
Bank identification numbers help identify issuers, networks, and essential information throughout the payment world.
How Will These Affect Your Business?
Many payment organizations will have to update their systems to support the new BIN length to avoid compromising customer service/cardholder protection.
At Corepay, we are accounting for all of these changes within our payment systems. If you contain BIN tabs as part of your processing, these might need to be updated. The same goes for risk or fraud.
The following are the ones affected by these changes either indirectly or directly:
- Acquirers
- Issuers
- Merchants
- Processors
- Card manufacturers
- Payment gateways
- Dispute resolution providers
- Fin-techs
- Credit card bureaus
- eCommerce shopping cart wallet developers
- Third party agents
- Aggregators
- Resellers
- Fraud/Risk Mitigation services
- Software vendors
- Loyalty providers
- Terminal providers
When Will These Changes Be Live?
Visa and Mastercard are set to go live with these changes on April 15, 2022. Upon this date, all cards issued will have an 8-digit BIN.
What’s Changing?
Visa & Mastercard are updating their BIN Mandate from its current 6-digit BIN structure to an 8-digit BIN structure on April 15, 2022.
- After April 15, 2022, all new BINs will be 8-digit BINs.
- Card issuers will have the option to expand their current 6-digit issuing BINs to 8-digits.
- Merchants using 3DS 2.0 should speak with their processors and consider passing the full BIN to 3DS2.
- Acquiring banks and processors are mandated to make these changes to allow for the acceptance and reliable processing of the new 8-digit BIns.
Things That Aren’t Changing
Below is a list of things that aren’t changing:
- Private account number (PAN) will remain the same.
- Account ranges will remain the same as today, with Mastercard being 11-digits and Visa being 9-digits.
- Regarding PCI Compliance Rules: The number of digits will remain the same.
- Merchant IDs will remain the same.
- Issuers are currently not mandated to make changes come April 2022. However, this may result in higher utilization fees.
- Major networks such as American Express, Discover, and China Union Pay have not announced timelines regarding adopting the new 8-digit BINS.
Why The Changes?
The migration to an 8-digit BIN ensures adequate global BIN supply for the industry, allowing for maximum growth across the entire payments industry.
8-Digit BIN Range And PCI Compliance
One of the tricky things for merchants is that PCI compliance is an industry requirement for securing credit card data globally. To maintain compliance with PCI, organizations are only allowed to utilize the first six and last four digits of a private account number.
Merchants are uncomfortable as they currently have to choose between staying PCI compliant and having access to the full 8-digit BIN range unless the PCI DSS decides to accommodate the use of the first 8-digits of a private account number.
Wrapping Up
Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to your PSP to make sure you’re compliant with these new changes moving forward. Be sure to subscribe to our email list located on the sidebar to stay up to date with the latest changes in the credit card processing ecosystem.
