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Ask HN: Why doesn't Stripe allow you to get BIN numbers?

1 points by caydenm ↗ HN
BIN numbers (first 6 digits of a credit card number) are used for everything from fraud prevention to showing a user which bank their payment card was from.

Seemingly all other payment processors give BIN information as part of their webhooks and APIs, but Stripe does not.

Is there a reason for this? Different interpretation of PCI compliance?

3 comments

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smca
It's still best practice to minimize the amount of card data shared. You can accomplish most of what you're looking to do using a combination of `card.brand`, `card.last4`, and expiry dates. "Visa ending in 4242, expires 09/24."

You can also write much more robust rules using Radar: https://stripe.com/docs/radar/rules. Something like: `Review if :is_disposable_email: and :card_funding: = 'prepaid'`

caydenm
Thanks for the quick reply Sam! We use them for purposes outside of fraud. Happy to chat more about our use case if that helps.

I was hoping there was a private API to support access?

smca
No worries! Unfortunately not, given the sensitivities. Still happy to hear about a use case though? There might be something else we could do/build/think about.