Dormant BINs and ICAs: why they still cost money and how to retire them

Card ranges outlive the programs they were made for. A pilot ends, a portfolio is sold, cards move to a new range. The old range stays registered with the scheme, and some of its fees keep coming.

BINs, ICAs and BIDs

• A BIN, or bank identification number, is the first digits of a card number. It identifies the issuer and the card range. The industry has moved from 6-digit to 8-digit BINs under the ISO/IEC 7812 standard.
• An ICA is a Mastercard customer ID. Your Mastercard ranges, and the charges for them, sit under one or more ICAs.
• A BID, or Business ID, is how Visa identifies and bills a client. Your Visa ranges sit under a BID.

Why a quiet range still costs money

• Fixed fees for holding the range or the ICA, charged whatever the activity.
• Optional services enrolled on the range, such as reports or fraud tools, which bill per range or per month.
• Minimum fees, where a service charges a floor amount even with no transactions.
• Connectivity and file maintenance tied to the ICA.

Each of these is small on its own, which is why they survive. Across several ranges and many months, they are worth a look.

How to find dormant ranges

1. List every BIN, ICA and BID registered to you at each scheme. Your account teams and the schemes' portals hold this list.
2. List the ranges your processor has active, with the number of live cards on each.
3. Add several months of transactions per range, from your processor.
4. Add the fees per range over the same months, from the scheme invoices.
5. Mark every range with fees and little or no activity. Those are your candidates.

The first step is where forgotten ranges show up: ones registered for a program that never launched, or kept after a migration.

Retiring a range safely

Closing a range that still has cards, tokens or open disputes causes more trouble than the fees. Work through this list first.

1. Check the expiry date of the last cards issued on the range, and replace or migrate any that are still active.
2. Make sure tokens linked to the range, in digital wallets and at merchants, are migrated or deactivated.
3. If cards moved to a new range, use the schemes' account updating services so merchants that store cards get the new details.
4. Wait until the dispute time limits in the scheme rules have passed for the last transactions on the range.
5. Agree with your processor how refunds sent to old card numbers are handled once the range is closed.
6. Remove the range from your processor's setup, including any stand-in parameters held at the scheme.
7. Ask the scheme, through your account team or its range management process, to deactivate the range, and ask for the date its fees stop.
8. Watch the next invoices to confirm that the range's fees and services have stopped.

When you cannot retire it yet

Sometimes a range has to stay open for a while, for disputes or a few remaining cards. You can still cancel the optional services enrolled on it, which can be a large part of its fixed cost. Our guide to optional services shows how.

BIN sponsors face the same question with sponsored ranges whose program has ended. When a fintech leaves, its ranges, and their fees, can stay behind.

If you would rather have this done for you, that is what our scheme fee review does: your Visa and Mastercard invoices, one scheme or both, over the period you choose, read line by line, with the action that removes each fee you do not need.

This guide is general information, based on public sources and on how scheme billing commonly works, and it is not advice for your situation. The schemes' rules and your agreements with them take precedence.