As the change may have implications for merchant and processor systems beyond payments.
The Issuer Identification Numbers (IIN) forms part of the primary account number (PAN) that links a card to an individual account. Merchants sometimes use PANs or IINs as a basis to identify a customer and offer relevant services outside of payments, such as loyalty programmes.
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published a new version of the ISO/IEC 7812-1 standard in which IINs can be expanded to eight-digits. EMVCo is updating its relevant specifications to support both existing and longer IINs, changing the IIN from a fixed length of six digits to a variable length of six or eight digits.
Point of sale terminals may need to be updated to ensure they recognise and have the ability to process both existing and longer IINs, or transactions may be terminated or processed incorrectly. Merchants using IINs for additional services may also need to update other elements of their backend systems.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now
We welcome comments that add value to the discussion. We attempt to block comments that use offensive language or appear to be spam, and our editors frequently review the comments to ensure they are appropriate. If you see a comment that you believe is inappropriate to the discussion, you can bring it to our attention by using the report abuse links. As the comments are written and submitted by visitors of the The Paypers website, they in no way represent the opinion of The Paypers.