BIN Routing: the lever for balancing your payment costs and performance

BIN Routing is a native pillar of Purse orchestration, allowing merchants to identify card characteristics to choose the most cost-effective route for every payment.

Today, more than 60% of merchants prefer to work with multiple payment service providers (PSPs) (source). In this context, strategically routing your flows is essential to protect your margins. BIN Routing transforms technical data like the Bank Identification Number, which corresponds to the first 6 to 8 digits of a card, into a powerful decision-making signal to align performance, costs, and user experience.

What is BIN Routing?

The principle is simple: as soon as your customer enters the first digits of their card, the system uses the BIN (6 to 8 digits) to trigger the appropriate action. Based on these digits, the merchant can configure their own business rules from their Purse interface.

Unlike static payment behavior, this feature allows you to apply a dynamic strategy: you decide which PSP should process which card type based on your banking agreements and observed performance.

The 3 strategic pillars for your business

1. Reducing payment costs (On-us routing and Scheme Fees)

Optimizing commissions is the primary benefit of BIN Routing:

• Support for "on-us" cases : identifying cards issued by the same bank as the acquirer to reduce the number of intermediaries.
• Fee optimization : reduce scheme fees and interchange costs by routing to the most competitive acquirer.

2. Improved acceptance rates

BIN routing ensures a better match between the card and the acquirer, thereby maximizing successful authorizations.

• Frictionless access : route to PSPs offering optimized exemptions to limit 3DS-related friction.
• Checkout conversion : a seamless journey directly improves your final conversion.

3. International scalability

To support your expansion, BIN routing allows you to manage payments based on the card's issuing country.

• Local acquirers : connect to local banks to optimize your performance outside your domestic market.
• Contractual compliance : more easily meet your volume commitments with your various PSPs.

Use case: Maximizing acceptance with the Purse x Payplug strategic alliance

BIN routing is not just a technical configuration; it allows you to build a true local performance strategy, as illustrated by the synergy between Purse and Payplug in the French market.

The strategic advantage of the BPCE group

For a merchant operating in France, one of the most powerful levers is to isolate cardholders from the BPCE Group. As soon as the customer enters their card number, the orchestrator analyzes the first 6 to 8 digits (the BIN) to instantly identify whether it belongs to this banking group. A business rule then automatically redirects these flows to Payplug, the group's PSP.

The benefits of the "short circuit" (On-us processing)

This approach is based on the concept of on-us processing (or on-us). Since the card issuer and the acquirer are part of the same ecosystem, the transaction benefits from priority processing.

• Higher acceptance rate : The direct proximity between the issuer and the payment partner reduces the risk of technical declines and naturally increases the volume of successful authorizations.
• Optimized fees : This intelligent routing allows for reduced commissions and limits network fees (scheme fees).
• Maximum fluidity : Transactions under €250 more easily access journeys frictionless (without 3DS authentication), which directly improves checkout conversion.

Take back control from your back office

BIN Routing becomes a business rule that you manage entirely on your own.

• Simplified configuration : associate a group of BINs with a specific "card experience" directly from the dashboard.
• Flexible activation : activation can be managed independently by the merchant or with the support of the Purse team.

By centralizing this logic within the orchestrator, you only need one SDK to manage all your payment flows in an intelligent and optimized way.

Would you like to see how to configure your own routing rules to reduce your costs?