Are you wondering whether BIN lists would be right for your business
? Perhaps you've just seen an advertisement for BIN lists and you are wondering what the benefits and the potential downsides might be to them? Here you will find out the good and the bad points about BIN lists and how they might be able to help you.
BIN Lists: The Good
The main good thing about a BIN list is the fact that you can stop fraudulent transactions from taking place in your store. They give you information about the card that is being used. Therefore you can see whether the person using the card is actually the card owner. You can see the country that the card is issued to, who it was issued by and who the actual owner is.
So if the card owner is registered as Mrs Susan Cook, if the person using the card is male then that would arouse suspicion! Of course fraud isn't always so easy to detect, that is why BIN lists contain a wide range of information to help you.
Another advantage to BIN lists is the fact that they can help you to reject incoming transactions if they don't match your requirements. This is particularly useful for online businesses. If you don't want to ship to various countries, you can block all credit cards that are registered abroad. Or perhaps you don't accept a specific type of card? In that case you can block all incoming transactions that are trying to pay with a card that you don't accept.
BIN lists are great at detecting and stopping fraud. The question is do they have any down sides?
BIN Lists: The Bad Points to Consider
The only real downsides to BIN lists, is that they may not be overly accurate. You never get to see the main official BIN list because it is only available to the government. So this means that you are relying upon individuals and companies to update the lists. They may not be updated frequently so the information contained within the list could be completely false.
When looking at a list of BIN numbers, you can assume that most of them are correct. There should only be the odd one that isn't completely factual. This could be for a variety of reasons including:
The issuer of the card might not have updated the system
The person could have moved so the address and country details could be false
The good news is that this doesn't happen very frequently. Yes the information contained within the lists might not be 100% accurate. However, this only happens in very rare cases. Most of the time the BIN lists are accurate and they contain thousands of credit card numbers that you can check. When used correctly BIN lists can actually help you to cut down fraud.
Just make sure that you take your time to find the right BIN lists and take a look at a few reviews on the different ones available. That way you will end up with the best possible BIN list to suit your business needs.