The ultimate guide to BIN Sponsorship

With BIN sponsorship being a quick alternative for companies to access major card schemes and build scalable payment products, whilst also allowing for flexibility, it has continued to gain traction within the payments industry and is increasingly becoming the preferred payment route for FinTechs.

We have put together this guide to provide clarity on BIN sponsorship and help you gain a better understanding of what BIN sponsorship is, the different routes that can be taken within a BIN sponsorship, and the benefits BIN sponsorship could have for your company.

What is BIN Sponsorship?

A BIN sponsorship is a single compliant connection between a card scheme network and an organisation, which allows for transactions to be processed and cardholder funds to be settled. Having a BIN sponsor, such as TransactPay, enables businesses to perform many operations of a financial institution through them, without having to obtain banking licenses.

We’ve broken down the term BIN sponsorship:

BIN

Stands for Banking Identification Number, and it is referring to the initial set of six or eight numbers within the long card number that is on the front of a payment card. These numbers are used to identify the banking institution that has issued the card and is used to match transactions to the issuer to ensure a smooth customer journey.

Sponsorship

Refers to the relationship between the client and a sponsor (the issuer of the BIN). To be a BIN sponsor, the issuer has to be a direct scheme member of the major card schemes (i.e. Mastercard and Visa). As scheme members, banking institutions can sponsor their clients to use scheme-approved BINs and account ranges.

When it comes to issuing cards through a BIN sponsorship, you must abide by the local requirements and regulations in the country a business is wishing to issue a card in, and the BIN sponsor must have licenses to issue in those countries. Despite what some companies may claim, there are currently no global issuers of BIN sponsorships, due to these requirements. At TransactPay, we provide active BIN and Sub-BIN ranges in 25 European countries and 17 different currencies.

To obtain a payment card, other parties are needed, and as a BIN sponsor, we have the connections to ensure all relevant parties are involved.

When are BIN Sponsorships used?

There are several situations, where a BIN sponsorship may be sought after by a business. These situations include when a business is looking to add:

• Corporate expense cards
• General spend cards
• Gift cards
•  Money transfer cards
• Travel and foreign exchange cards
• Payroll and payroll-plus cards
• Affiliate commission cards

Depending on the needs of the business, and the intended use, these may be issued as physical, virtual prepaid, debit, credit or tokenized cards.

What routes can be taken during BIN Sponsorship?

When it comes to BIN sponsorship, there are a number of routes that can be taken, these include a dedicated BIN sponsorship route, settlement only route and service provider route.

What are the benefits of BIN Sponsorships?

BIN Sponsorships allow businesses to access major card schemes without having to obtain their own licenses, which is typically a long and strenuous process. Instead, BIN sponsorships allow for businesses to quickly access payment and major card schemes, through using their sponsor’s licenses.

Going through a BIN sponsor is beneficial, as they are able to guide a business on the laws and regulations of issuing payment cards in those countries and ensures that their programme adheres to the Scheme rules and regulatory requirements.

BIN Sponsors can also guide businesses through the BIN setup process and perform ongoing support and management to help you deliver a compelling programme

Why choose TransactPay?

You are in safe hands with the TransactPay team, who have extensive knowledge of both regulatory and scheme requirements.

TransactPay are licenced UK and European e-money institutions, and Principal members of both Mastercard and Visa. As a BIN sponsor, we can share our licenses with our clients, allowing them to perform operations of a financial institution without having to obtain banking licenses themselves.

We provide secure, flexible and innovative payment and card solutions. Our BIN sponsorship service is fully integrated with many leading processors, and we have the capabilities to integrate with any business’s proprietary processing system to enable a flexible, cost-efficient and fast program implementation, with ongoing management that can be relied upon.

Our solutions are used by regulated financial institutions, financial services companies, and marketing organisations.

We are transparent about everything we do at TransactPay, and we are actively working to raise industry standards. When it comes to BIN sponsorship, we work with our clients to decide the best route, and if we feel BIN sponsorship is not worthwhile for your business, then we will be upfront about it. Get in contact with our experts today to find out more about our BIN Sponsorship scheme.