How does BIN routing work?
When a card is entered, the first digits are looked up in a BIN table. The lookup returns attributes such as issuing bank, issuing country, card brand, debit, credit or prepaid, and consumer or commercial. Routing rules then use those attributes as conditions, for example sending cards issued in Mexico to a provider with Mexican acquiring, or sending a particular issuer’s cards to the provider that approves them best.
Why does BIN routing matter for approval rate?
Approval rates vary more by issuer and issuing country than by almost anything else. Some issuers decline transactions from cross-border acquirers but approve the same cards from domestic ones. As an illustrative example: if one issuer accounts for 2,000 payments a month and approves 40% through PSP A but 65% through PSP B, a BIN rule that sends that issuer’s cards to B adds about 500 approvals a month.
What are the risks of BIN routing?
BIN tables go stale as banks merge, reissue ranges and move to 8-digit BINs, so the data source needs regular updates. Rules that are too granular split traffic into samples too small to measure, and a rule tuned to one month’s results may not hold the next. It also helps to keep a cascade path behind every BIN rule, so a single provider problem does not decline a whole issuer’s cards.
Where does Omno use it?
In Omno, card attributes are among the conditions routing and PSP eligibility rules can work with, alongside customer group, customer verification level, method and currency. Card blocking handles cards that should not be processed at all, and the routing-decision log shows which rule matched.