21

Is there a database of credit card numbers that tells you what bank issued the credit card?

  • 3 is American Express
  • 4 is Visa/MasterCard
  • 6 is Discover

Typically the first 6 numbers will indicate what bank issued the card and sometimes what type of credit card it is.

2
  • I'm certain the data is out there for free somewhere. Best wishes in your search!
    – pndfam05
    Oct 30, 2014 at 22:50
  • 1
    If you have data license requirements, can you please update the question?
    – philshem
    Nov 2, 2014 at 19:01

8 Answers 8

5

if you need a free bin database, you can get it here:

https://getcreditcardonline.com/free-bin-database-download/

Data in CSV, JSON, SQL, TXT, Excel formats, etc.

1
13

What you are looking for is the Issuer Identifier Number (IIN), which are the first 6 digits of the credit card. Like @pndfam05 mentioned, there are many commercial databases that charge for more than 10 lookups.

But, there is binlist.net that offers either

  • a data dump on their github repo (raw CSV link), (it seems it is a limited file)

  • or a freely available RESTful API that allows 10k requests per hour. For this to work, you'd have to have either a list of IINs to check, or you can pass 000000 to 999999 in blocks of 10k, which means 100 hours of total requests (which is not so much).

Here are some details for the REST API:

Make HTTP GET requests to http://www.binlist.net/{format}/{bin}

Supported formats are csv, xml or json.

The JSON response would look like this:

{
   "bin":"431940",
   "brand":"VISA",
   "sub_brand":"",
   "country_code":"IE",
   "country_name":"Ireland",
   "bank":"BANK OF IRELAND",
   "card_type":"DEBIT",
   "card_category":"",
   "latitude":"53",
   "longitude":"-8",
   "query_time":"365.845us"
}

CSV like this:

"431940","VISA","IE","Ireland","BANK OF IRELAND","DEBIT","","606.649us",

XML like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response>
   <Bin>431940</Bin>
   <Brand>VISA</Brand>
   <SubBrand />
   <CountryCode>IE</CountryCode>
   <CountryName>Ireland</CountryName>
   <Bank>BANK OF IRELAND</Bank>
   <CardType>DEBIT</CardType>
   <CardCategory />
   <Latitude>53</Latitude>
   <Longitude>-8</Longitude>
   <QueryTime>338.636us</QueryTime>
</Response>

Note: You can always ask them for a full data dump - @bin_list

3
  • Sounds great, but do you know how the data is licensed? Oct 30, 2014 at 20:00
  • Their website says CC 3.0, and I would assume that is for the data, too.
    – philshem
    Oct 30, 2014 at 20:06
  • 2
    The website currently states: "This website is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 by binlist.net". The data from their API is not explicitly mentioned. Even if they mean to include their data, there are two additional problems: 1) It is not clear where they got the data from in the first place and if they are allowed to re-license it. 2) CC 3.0 doesn't include sui generis database rights, those were only included in CC 4.0. Using the data should be fine, but personally I wouldn't feel comfortable redistributing it, at least not in Europe. Oct 30, 2014 at 20:18
9

I had a business need for this. A quick wikipedia read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_7812#cite_note-ANSI-3 showed that the American Banker's Association was the ultimate holder of the "official" version of the dataset. (It only took 2 holes of data collection golf (phonecalls); a longer one to ANSI where I ended up getting the phone/email for the contact at ABA) Here's the information they sent to me for my (ultimately rejected) application:

Thank you for your interest in the ISO Register of Issuer Identification Numbers. The Register is not available to the general public. The Register is available only to those institutions that have issued cards in accordance with ISO/IEC 7812 Parts 1 and 2 and whose information appears in the Register; authorized block holders, Sponsoring Authorities and network providers.

Note that the purpose of the ISO/IEC 7812 Numbering System is to uniquely identify an issuing institution in an international interchange environment. It is not possible to determine the country of origin from the IIN, nor is it possible to determine the type of card being used (i.e. debit, credit, ATM, etc.) Also, the "Register" does not contain information on the financial institutions who issue a card on behalf of Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express because that information is not reported to us. That type of information would need to be obtained directly from those various organizations.

In order to determine your eligibility, please provide responses to the following questions:

1) Does your institution issue cards? If yes, please indicate under which IIN(s) your institution has issued these cards: 2) Is your institution an authorized block holder? If yes, what date was your block holder agreement executed? 3) Is your institution a recognized network provider? * (Please explain.) 4) Please provide a specific explanation for what purpose your institution needs to subscribe to the Register.

*Network providers and processors are required to complete a licensing agreement which shall remain in force for the duration of the subscription.

Your written response to these questions should be submitted the attention of the Registration Authority at [email protected]. Once eligibility is determined, the appropriate subscription application and licensing agreement will be sent to you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I was interested in fraud prevention, which, in their narrow interpretation, is not a legitimate use of the dataset.

2

The data is available. A starting point would be to search for BIN (Bank Identification Number) Data.

www.bindb.com but I'm pretty certain they want to sell you the service or sell you the data. I don't think it's free.

1
  • That's exactly what I'm looking for but don't want to pay for the data. I recall there are some random text files that have partial lists... but there must be a central repository. Someone (Visa?) has to assign and approve the number scheme at least for Visa cards.
    – Sun
    Oct 30, 2014 at 18:05
1

totally free bin lists database providing issuer, bank, country, sometimes card type, city, carotid card number length and phone number at https://www.binlists.com

1

I purchased a complete BIN database from https://bin-data.com for $179 and it has over 100,000 total records from every country. I had to sign a license agreement and agree not to distribute the files.

0

Not sure what you need the database for but it might be wise to leverage using an API. That way you transfer the server load and the task of maintaining and keeping the database updated.

If you are looking for a credit card IIN/BIN checker API I can suggest:

Offer free checks and also paid checks.

1
  • ...the free quota for the API is up to 25 calls per month
    – philshem
    Nov 6, 2017 at 8:28
0

https://github.com/iannuttall/binlist-data

impressive compilation, can't say how often it is updated. seems to have been scraped from some of the sites listed above.

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