8-digit BIN Industry Change | Visa
8-digit BIN Industry Change
The 8-digit BIN industry change is here. Make sure your business is ready.
Why did the payments industry adopt the 8-digit BIN standard?
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8-digit BIN (Bank Identification Number) standard provides additional BINs for future use, allowing the payments industry to continue to innovate and grow well in the future. Visa, in partnership with a diverse group of stakeholders in the payments ecosystem, has expanded the length of Bank Identification Numbers (BINs) on the Visa system from six to eight digits. Since Visa is now only assigning 8-digit BINs for new payment credentials, it is imperative that every part of the payments chain is ready to process 6- and 8-digit BINs.
Impacts of the new 8-digit BIN standard
Merchant impacts
As more stakeholders adopt 8-digit BINs, it is no longer possible to rely on the first six digits of the PAN for authorization, routing and transaction clearing. It is critical to assess the impacts of this change with your acquirer, processor, vendors and other partners that support your transaction processing, routing and downstream activities. If you are using 6-digit BINs for the following activities, at a minimum, you need to determine how the BIN expansion will impact your back-end systems:
- Identification of card product types for certain merchandise restrictions
- Fraud and/or chargeback analytics
- Issuer identification
- Routing, if applicable to your region and if referenced at the BIN level in lieu of the account range
- Unique BIN range identification (e.g., fleet cards, specific corporate card types, benefits cards)
- Cash back qualification
- Optimization of approval rates and authorization analysis
Recommended impact assessments include:
- Detail how the issuing BIN is used in your own POS environment and adjust any logic that is based solely on the first six digits to also accommodate the first eight digits (at a minimum).
- Assess downstream system impacts (e.g., loyalty, billing, reporting, fraud management, etc.) and make necessary changes to accommodate the longer BIN length.
- Conduct testing to confirm seamless operations and downstream processes.
- Confirm your ability to process transactions with your processor and complete downstream activities regardless of the BIN length.
- Ensure BIN table information only comes from reliable sources (e.g., your acquirer or registered entities) that receive information directly from Visa (e.g., Visa BIN Attribute Sharing Service).
Merchant resources
In this webinar, you will learn about Visa’s guidance for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8-digit BIN industry change and what merchants should do to adapt.
We recommend that merchants engage and assess impacts across their organization as soon as possible to maximize efficiencies and avoid surprises. The following documents will provide more information on the processes you may need to change to adapt to the new 8-digit BIN standard.
- Download the merchant readiness checklist
- Download the merchant infographic
- Download the implications for merchants webinar deck
Acquirer impacts
Acquirers should ensure their routing logic, processing logic and/or applicable tables are updated to process at the 6- and 8-digit BIN lengths. It is essential that acquirers and merchants do not make decisions solely on using 6-digits since issuers commonly use one or more 9-digit account ranges to differentiate specific products and/or processing parameters for their assigned 6-digit issuing BINs.
Issuers may set up their routing preferences using as few as the first four digits of the PAN all the way up to the first 12 digits. The most common length for routing is nine digits. In certain regions, nearly 30% of Visa issuing BINs have routing set up at either the 10th, 11th or 12th digits.
Token BINs
Visa assigns 9-digit token account ranges instead of 6-digit issuing BINs, so it is important that all token inquiries be done at the entire 9-digit account range.
- A token BIN can have multiple account funding sources (e.g., credit, debit, prepaid) for different account ranges.
- Multiple issuers may be assigned token account ranges from the same token BIN.
- Each 9-digit token account range will be configured with the specific product and processing attributes and must be processed accordingly.
Specific impacts
Please work with your processors and other payments industry partners to analyze the impacts to your payment processing and downstream systems, which may include:
Transaction Processing: Using the 6-digit BIN for authorization routing or transaction clearing may disrupt transaction processing (e.g., it may not capture the correct country, product ID or account funding source).
Fraud Protection and Risk Rules: If you use 6-digit BINs in your fraud protection programs and risk rules, functions impacted may include:
Pre-validation of transactions against specific fraud parameters (including issuing BIN)
- Blocks on specific BINs for authorization processing, including Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions
- Reporting and analytics on fraudulent transaction activity at the BIN level (e.g., internal reporting to detect high number of disputes from certain regions or issuer BINs, allowing the merchant to directly reach out to the issuer to resolve issues)
- Software or support to merchants for healthcare, fleet or other designated products (e.g., health care merchants [pharmacies, drug stores, etc.] that needed compare the card number against other software to ensure that the PAN is eligible to purchase the merchandise SKU need to ensure they read out to the eighth digit to properly authorize)
Because the issuing BIN is not used in VisaNet for authorization, clearing or settlement of transactions or any related exception items, there is no impact to processing from a Visa standpoint.
Partner Readiness
The change to 8-digit BINs may impact your organization, customers, merchants, other clients, service providers and vendors. Partner readiness is critical to success, and collaboration across all customer and stakeholder groups is essential. This is not just a technology project and requires cross-functional attention.
Acquirers’ resources
Below are resources acquirers can use to evaluate the impact of 8-digit BINs:
Acquirer processor resources:
Service provider impacts
Service providers should ensure that routing logic is now in place to process at both the 6- and 8-digit BIN length. Using the first six digits of the PAN for services may result in impacts on back-end systems, including:
- Transaction processing
- Issuing product management
- Cardholder servicing
- ATM
- Merchant servicing disputes
- Fraud management
- Data warehouse and reporting
- Encryption services
Allowing adequate time for communication and planning with clients, merchants, vendors and other partners and suppliers is a key planning consideration. If the new 8-digit BIN standard is not supported, transaction processes may be impacted and services provided to clients may be disrupted.
Failure points and severity will vary depending on:
- Specific issuing BIN use
- Supporting technology set up
- Dependencies across service providers
- Downstream process flows and associated outputs
Service provider resources
In this webinar, you will learn about Visa’s guidance for the ISO 8-digit BIN change, and what service providers should do to adapt.
Below are resources that service providers can use to evaluate the impact of 8-digit BINs:
Processor impacts
Processors that use the first six digits of the PAN to route transactions may experience broad impacts across transaction processing. This could include:
- Disruptions to product identification
- Service eligibility
- Authorization parameters
- Reporting and accounting processes
Processors also need to work with their clients to ensure all Visa transaction processing can accommodate both 6- and 8-digit BINs. To ensure your clients are ready please refer to the acquirer/ issuer sections.
Issuer impacts
Although issuers are not required to migrate existing 6-digit BINs, Visa urges issuers to begin considering the impacts of the 8-digit issuing BIN on current primary account number (PAN) assignment strategies. Beyond limiting PAN assignment to specific 9-digit account ranges, Visa also recommends that clients consolidate in-use 9-digit account ranges into as few future 8-digit issuing BINs as possible.
In addition, if you accept cards from foreign cardholders (e.g., at ATMs, cash advance machines, branches, etc.), you will also need to evaluate impacts to ensure you do not have any acquiring issues if the card being accepted belongs to an issuer using an 8-digit BIN.
Because the issuing BIN is not used in VisaNet for authorization, clearing or settlement of transactions or any related exception items, there is no impact to processing from a Visa standpoint. However, you will need to work with your processor and other processing and host partners to analyze the impacts to your payment processing and downstream systems.
In addition, if you use 6-digit BINs in your fraud protection programs and risk rules, they may be impacted if you are not prepared for 8-digit BINs. These might include:
- Pre-validation of transactions against specific fraud parameters (including issuing BIN)
- Blocks on specific BINs for authorization processing, such as Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions
- Reporting and analytics on fraudulent transaction activity at the BIN level
- Dispute processes
Issuer resources
Below are resources issuers can use to evaluate the impact of 8-digit BINs:
Issuer processor resources:
PCI compliance impacts
To better understand the implications of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) requirements and how they may or may not impact the 8-digit BIN standard, we suggest you review this webinar:
Get the full picture on PCI Compliance for 8-digit BINs with the following resources:
- Download the 8-digit BIN PCI Security Requirements Whitepaper
- Download the 8-digit BIN Acceptance Issues Whitepaper
- Download the Visa 8-digit BIN Impact Assessment
Need help?
Contact the Visa 8-digit BIN team. We’re ready to assist you.
Need additional support?
Contact your Visa representative to learn how Visa Consulting and Analytics can help you evaluate your 8-digit BIN strategy.