Reading BIN Ranges

How a BIN range is allocated

Networks allocate ranges of prefixes to issuers. An issuer requests a range for a product, a region and a card level, and the network returns a block of prefixes it can issue against. The block is then subdivided internally by the issuer as it issues cards.

• An issuer requests a range from the network
• The network returns a block of prefixes
• The block maps to a product, region and card level
• The issuer subdivides the block as it issues cards
• Ranges are tracked as ranges, not as individual prefixes

How ranges are read

A range is a start and end prefix, usually a multiple of a power of ten in the final digits. Given a start prefix, the size of the block tells you how many prefixes it contains and therefore how much of the issuer's allocation it represents.

• A range has a start prefix and an end prefix
• Block sizes are usually powers of ten
• The span indicates how many prefixes the range holds
• Ranges are often grouped by product within one issuer
• Some issuers hold hundreds of ranges

Reassignment and reuse

Because ranges are assets, they are reassigned. When an issuer retires a product, rebrands a card or is acquired, its ranges may move. A range that resolved to one issuer last year can resolve to another today, which is why a fresh dataset matters.

• Ranges follow the product, not the institution
• Rebranding and portfolio changes move ranges
• Acquisitions shift ranges between institutions
• Retired ranges become available for reuse
• Always check the timestamp of a resolution

Using a real range list

Our BIN database contains 374,788 individual prefixes with issuer, brand, type, category and country. The country and brand pages break the same data down per region and per network, and the issuer pages list every prefix an institution holds.

• 374,788 prefixes with full issuer and country detail
• 225 country pages
• 20 network and brand pages
• 860 issuer pages
• CSV and JSON downloads plus a REST API