The use of credit and debit cards has become widespread in recent years. This form of payment is very comfortable for users, since they do not have to go to their bank to withdraw cash. Although it is an increasingly used payment tool, many do not know the meaning of the digits that appear on their card
The BBVA financial institution explains on its website that the world of cards is based on the transmission of information through networks and the encoding of financial data. This system requires a numeric support to organize and structure the information. For this reason, the cards have a series of numbers that present a systematization and are not random.
As the entity explains, these digits have a meaning, they serve to associate that card with the user’s checking account. These numbers that appear on your credit or debit card usually vary between 10 and 19 figures. If the card was issued in Spain, it is normal for it to have 16 digits.
The meaning of the numbers on a card
The first number corresponds to the issuer scheme or identifier of the company or industry that issues the card. For security reasons, the complete ranges of issuers and countries are private. Although the main starting ranges of each of the cards are known.
VISA cards all start with 4, if they are of the VISA Electron type they have ranks between 4026, 417500, 4508, 4844, 4913, 4917. Mastercard is assigned ranks between 51 and 55. Maestro cards start with numbers that are any of these series: 5018, 5020, 6304, 6759, 6761, 6763.
– These ranges supplemented up to the first 7 digits locate the type of card, the type of issuer and the geographical area in which the card has been issued.
– Regarding the following numbers, they form the internal code of the entity to associate the card with the customer.
– Most cards allocate one of their numbers to the control digit. Finally, there is the verification digit that is obtained by applying the Luhn algorithm, verification sum to obtain a correct validation. This algorithm algebraically relates the rest of the numbers to return the value of the check digit.
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For VISA, Maestro and Mastercard cards, the check digit is in position 16.
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