Eye on Acquiring: BIN Supply Remedies And an Update on Faster EMV Techniques

By Kevin Woodward
@DTPaymentNews

Acquirers and processors have until Oct. 14 to prepare their systems for a new range of bank-identification numbers MasterCard Inc. intends to add to its inventory for issuers.

Announced in 2014, the move is an attempt to stymie a possible exhaustion of BINs. These numbers are the first six digits for a credit or debit card primary account number. In addition to its existing BIN range, which extends from 51 to 55, MasterCard’s new range is from 2221 through 2720.

Cards bearing the new BINs likely won’t appear until after 2017, following a round of testing and compliance checks, MasterCard says.

The new BINs are necessary because of the growth in electronic payments that rely on card numbers. For example, mobile-payments services substitute a tokenized version for a user’s actual card number. The token shares the same format.

“We need to support the growth of our business and our customers,” Tania Baptista, MasterCard vice president of U.S. product delivery, told attendees at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference last week in Scottsdale, Ariz. The testing is necessary to ensure proper acceptance before any cards are issued, she said. “Acquirers need to be aware of and understand and use the [new] account range,” Baptista said, referencing the necessity for acquirers to read MasterCard’s full BIN files during the clearing process to ensure BINs and account ranges are used efficiently.

Independent sales organizations and acquirers will have to ensure their gateways are updated to properly recognize the new MasterCard BINs, participate in merchant awareness and education efforts, and install software and point-of-sale-terminal updates, Baptista told the audience. “MasterCard is creating materials to help with this,” she said.

As a mathematical matter, Baptista said the additional BIN range should last 100 years.

However, more BIN changes may be coming as the International Organization for Standardization is reviewing the BIN standard for possible expansion from six to eight digits, according to American National Standards Institute.

ISOs and sales agents at the meeting also heard from Visa Inc. and Discover Financial Services about their EMV protocols.

The U.S. launch of EMV chip cards has been marred by consumer and merchant perceptions that EMV transactions take too long to process at the point of sale. In response, most of the card brands earlier this year introduced programs with technical specifications that enable consumers to withdraw their chip cards from a POS terminal sooner.

Visa Inc.’s Quick Chip protocol is designed to mimic the experience consumers have had with magnetic-strip payment cards, said Simon Hurry, Visa senior director of risk and authentication. Quick Chip and similar protocols enable the consumer to remove the card in the middle of the transaction instead of at the end, he said. The protocol also benefits developers because the quicker specification eliminates unnecessary steps, he said.

In an update to the audience, Discover said approximately 30% of the card brand’s active merchants now accept EMV chip cards. Ana Egan, senior manager of the brand’s Chip Center of Excellence, added that approximately 30% of Discover’s transactions are EMV-enabled.