Transactions
Bank Identification Numbers
The first 6 digits of a debit or credit card are known as the bank identification number (BIN), or issuer identification number (IIN).
Looking up the BINs associated with cards you’re processing can provide a lot of insight into your business – like identifying trends in declines or purchases (e.g. where most of your customers are located, or what types of cards they use).
You can view and store BINs without compromising or changing your PCI compliance requirements.
Finding BINs in the gateway
For a single transaction, you can view the associated card's BIN in the Control Panel. Find these details by running a transaction search:
- Log into the Control Panel
- Click on Transactions in the navigation bar
- Scroll to the Transaction Search section
- Define your desired parameters and click the Search button
You will see the BIN in the search results, as the first 6 digits under the Payment Information column.
If you want to compare BINs across multiple transactions, download your transaction search into a CSV file by clicking the Download button at the top of the search results page. The BINs will be in the First Six of Credit Card column of the CSV file.
You can also find BINs by searching a transaction ID via the API. The response object will include the BIN as one of the parameters, and you can investigate from there.
BIN databases
Once you have a BIN, you can look up information about the card by entering it into a BIN database – we like using binlist.net
BIN databases typically show the following information*:
- Type, brand, and level of card (e.g. Gold, Platinum, etc.)
- Purchase limits
- If the card is ATM only, electronic only, Maestro, or prepaid
- Name and country of the bank that issued the card
* Information provided by BIN databases may vary, depending on card brand and type.
8-Digit BIN expansion readiness
Effective April 2022, both Visa and Mastercard will begin assigning 8-digit issuer BINs, and all stakeholders that process with Visa and Mastercard must be ready to handle and process 8-digit BINs at this time. Braintree already processes 8-digit bins and this expansion will not have any impact to your current Braintree payment processing integration.
Existing issued card processing and current practices
Because Primary Account Number (PAN) length will remain 16 digits, there is no need to proactively reissue existing cards. The BIN will become the existing first 8 digits of the PAN.
Integrations
There are no required changes to your integration.
BIN data availability
Existing Braintree APIs, GraphQL integrations, console search, and BIN reports will continue to provide 6 digit BINs.
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (e.g. PCI, DSS) and BIN Expansion
Display of PAN
PCI standards* require that the PAN must be masked when it appears (the first six and/or last four digits is the maximum number of digits that will appear), so that only staff with a legitimate business need can see more than the first six/last four digits of the PAN (e.g 123456******0001).
Data at rest
PCI standards* allow merchants to safely store the PAN of the card through truncation. Merchants that use truncation as their only method of complying with the PCI requirement for protecting data at rest will need to add one or more of the other acceptable methods for data protection, such as encryption, hashing, or tokenization.
For more information, see this post from the PCI security standards blog and the Visa webinar on 8-digit BIN PCI impact
*PCI DSS v3.2.1 standard, 3.3 requirement