Your BIN data is only as good as the last time it was updated. That’s a fact. If you currently rely on a third-party BIN tool that doesn’t receive data directly from the networks and only refreshes its data infrequently, you could be making decisions based on outdated and inaccurate information.

Mastercard recently analyzed customers using their BIN file and found that those pulling the file every 1-3 months had a 20-30% outdated BIN rate—equating to as many as 40,000 outdated BINs. That’s 40,000 potential miscalculations in your routing strategy, fraud prevention rules, or cost optimization efforts. 

At Pagos, we pull 8-9 digit BIN ranges directly from both global and local card networks on a weekly basis—or even daily for some use cases. When it comes to payments, accuracy matters.

How Businesses Use BIN Data

BIN data informs critical business decisions, including:

• Routing strategies: Design a strategy that routes transactions to the processor with the highest approval rate or lowest associated cost (read more), and identify when debit cards can be routed to multiple networks

• Card type restrictions: Depending on your business type, you may block certain card types (e.g. non-reloadable prepaid cards) from purchasing subscriptions or certain high-risk products

• Retry strategies: Finetune your retry strategy by identifying characteristics of cards with high approval rates on retries

• Fraud prevention: Create BIN-based fraud rules to identify and block issuing banks or specific BINs frequently associated with fraud or carding attacks

• Interchange savings: Reduce your interchange costs by identifying when a customer’s card qualifies for Level II or III data

• Marketing strategies: Get to know your customer base and which card types to target with promotions

Each of these strategies depends on you having the right BIN data.

BIN Data: It’s Always Changing

Some global card networks update their BIN lists every day, incorporating changes from issuing banks. These updates can include:

• New BINs and BIN ranges, including extending 8 digit ranges and sunsetting 6 digit ranges

• Changes in card product details or authentication requirements

• Changes in issuing bank support for network tokenization

• Domestic-only indicators being added or removed

• Changes to reloadable/non-reloadable flags for debit card ranges

• Changes to debit ranges resulting from the Durbin Clarification, allowing debit transactions to be processed by at least two different networks

If your BIN data provider only updates once a quarter or doesn’t receive news of these changes directly from the networks, you could be in trouble. In fact, you could be making decisions based on data that has changed multiple times over! These inaccuracies can lead to unnecessary declines, failed fraud rules, incorrect routing and retry decisions, and lost revenue.

Something else to keep in mind: there’s no clear logic as to which BINs change with each network’s release or how BIN ranges might change over time. The card issuers you process the most might issue the most changes in a given week, meaning missing that week’s update could have a significant impact on your business. For this reason, it’s especially important to keep all your BIN data as up-to-date as possible.

The Proof is in The Numbers

In 2021, Visa compared their Visa BIN Attribute Sharing Service (VBASS) to a leading third-party BIN database and found some surprising results. According to their analysis, only 32% of the third party service’s data was accurate when compared to Visa’s own records, including:

• 52% had the issuer name incorrect

• 24% had the card product name incorrect

• 14% had the card type (credit, debit, or prepaid) incorrect

Pagos’ BIN database—Parrot—updates weekly. In the weekly file, we include data on how many BIN ranges from each network were removed, added, or updated. Last week, one card brand changed 2% of their BINs, while another changed 4%! That translates to thousands of BINs updating every week.

How Pagos Delivers Better BIN Data

We are committed to ensuring you always have the freshest and most accurate BIN Data possible. To ensure this, Parrot updates weekly using direct data feeds from the card networks themselves, including Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express (see the full list here). We don’t rely on third-party aggregators that introduce delays and inaccuracies, and we support all 8-9 digit BIN ranges. As a result, you can confidently use our provided BIN data to make informed decisions, reduce payment friction, and optimize costs.

If you’re building payment strategies based on BIN data, make sure it’s the most accurate and up-to-date data possible. With Pagos, you can act with confidence. Reach out today to get started!