The first 6 digits of a credit card number are known as the Issuer Identification Number (IIN) , previously known as Bank Identification Number (BIN) . Merchants use the BIN or IIN information to identify the issuing institution, country of origin, card type and other details. For many year I’ve been wondering where to get the best Binlists, but they are hard to get outside of the card scheme organizations, such as Visa or MasterCard .