The Buyt Desk
From January 2022, you will have to feed your 16 digit debit/credit card number for all your online transactions. Either you punch your card number or get a token number for your card and use it. Card tokenization will enable users to get a unique code from their bank that will be linked to their debit/credit cards. This will save them from memorizing the long digit. From next year RBI will not allow online merchants or payment getaways to store card numbers of the users on their website. The reason behind this step is to make your card transactions more secure. If the data of the company which stores your card number gets hacked there are chances that your card details could be compromised. By not allowing any merchant or payment gateway to save your number will add an additional layer of security to your cards.
What does the 16 Digit of your Debit Card tell you?
The 16-digit debit card number is just not any set of numbers but it is a hidden information code. Each number signifies important information. When you make an online payment, with the help of these numbers, the payment system finds out from which network company this card has been issued to you. Along with this, these numbers also give you information about your bank account.
Let’s decode these 16-digit –
The first digit of the ATM card means the one who issued the card. This is called the Major Industry Identifier (MII- Major Industry Identifier). This digit is different for every industry. Here is a list of MII’s-
0- ISO and other industries
1- Airlines
2- Airlines and other industries
Travel and entertainment (American Express or Food Club)
4- Banking and Finance (Visa)
5- Banking and Finance (MasterCard)
6- Banking and Merchandising
7- Petroleum
8- Telecommunications and other industries
9- National Assignment
The first 6 digital shows which company has issued this card. This is called the ‘Issuer Identification Number’ (IIN).
Mastercard = 5XXXXX
Visa = 4XXXXX
After this, except for the last digit, that is, from the 7th to the 15th digit, the number is linked to the bank account. This is not a bank account number. Do not worry that your bank account number will be exposed as it is concealed in a code and doesn’t actually show the exact bank account number. It is issued by the card issuer and it is a unique number.
The last digit of any debit card is called the checksum digit. This digit is used to find out whether your card is valid or not
Hope we have helped in understanding the 16-digit of your debit card.
