Data services specialist BinBase has released an updated version of its card intelligence database, a tool designed to help businesses work out which bank sits behind any payment card a customer uses.
Every card carries a string of opening digits known as a bank identification number, or BIN, which reveals the issuing bank and the type of card.
BinBase's database matches those digits to the bank behind them, information that merchants, payment processors and financial institutions rely on to route transactions correctly.
The task has grown more complicated as card numbers have become longer and, increasingly, hidden.
Services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay do not pass on a customer's real card number.
Instead they generate a substitute string of digits, called a token, that stands in for the card during payment.
That protects the shopper but makes it harder for retailers to identify the underlying bank, which can lead to payments being sent down the wrong path, incurring higher fees or being wrongly declined.
The new dataset attempts to fix this by resolving both the longer 8-digit and 11-digit card ranges, including the tokenised numbers used by mobile wallets, down to the specific issuing bank.
It also adds a feature the company calls a Waterfall Lookup, which lets older payment systems that expect shorter, 6-digit codes still function without being upgraded.
"Precision at the issuer lookup level is critical for modern payment routing," said Michael Evans, a director at BinBase.
The database is refreshed daily and carries 29 separate pieces of information for each card range.
Those include whether a card qualifies for certain US fee exemptions under the Durbin Amendment, whether it supports faster payouts, and how it is branded across different regions.
BinBase is distributing the data in several common formats so that businesses can plug it directly into their own systems.
The company has also published a technical specification and a free sample dataset on the software platform GitHub, allowing developers to test the product before committing to it.
The release is aimed squarely at the friction that builds up when card numbers become fragmented across different formats and technologies.
For retailers, even small improvements in correctly identifying a customer's bank can reduce the number of legitimate payments that are mistakenly turned away.
