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BIN Setup and Card Programs

What is a BIN?​

A BIN (Bank Identification Number) is the 6-digit prefix that identifies your card program on the payment network (Mastercard or Visa). When a cardholder taps to pay or enters their card details online, the payment network uses the BIN to route the transaction to the correct issuer.

Your BIN is provisioned by the payment network and configured in Open Fabric during onboarding.

What is a Card Program?​

A Card Program is a named configuration that ties your Open Fabric integration to a BIN. It defines:

  • The card scheme (Mastercard or Visa)
  • The card type (credit, debit, or prepaid)
  • The country the program operates in

Every token provisioned through Open Fabric — whether a tap-and-pay token, digital wallet token, or virtual card — is associated with a Card Program.

One vs multiple Card Programs​

Most clients have a single Card Program, set up during onboarding. In this case, all tokens are automatically associated with that program and you do not need to reference Card Programs in your API calls.

info

If you only have a single Card Program on your account, you may ignore the card_program_id in the API calls and reporting

Some clients operate multiple Card Programs under the same Open Fabric account — for example, separate programs for consumer and business cards, or different programs per market. In this case, each Card Program has a unique card_program_id that you can use when provisioning tokens to control which program a token belongs to.

Using a card program when tokenizing an account​

The card_program_id field is optional on provisioning API calls:

  • If omitted, your default Card Program is used automatically.
  • If your account has multiple Card Programs, pass card_program_id to associate the token with the correct program.
{
  "tenant_customer_ref": "CUST0001",
  "tenant_account_ref": "account_123",
  "card_program_id": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890"
}

How Card Programs are managed​

Card Programs are configured by Open Fabric — you cannot create or modify them directly through the API. Contact your Open Fabric integration team to add a new Card Program or update an existing one.