What is the issue number on a debit card

You might have been asked if your credit card has an issue number when you made an online payment or seen the number printed on one of your cards and wondered what it is and why it's there. The credit card issue number is a short typically 1 digit number printed on the front of some debit and credit cards in the UK and Europe. It is used to indicate the sequential number of the card when it is reissued or replaced but has become obsolete.

Read on to find out which types of credit cards have an issue number, what exactly it is and when you might need to use it. Issue numbers used to be a popular way for debit cards and credit cards to indicate the difference between an old and a new credit card when it was reissued or replaced. If your card went past its expiry date or you lost it, a new card would be printed and this would have the next sequential issue number on it - your first one will have a issue number of 1 on most cards and a 0 on a small number.

Credit card companies would previously use your credit card number as the defacto account number and therefore they didn't want to change it when a new card had to be issued. This new card would also have a different issue number which would indicate how many times the card has been replaced.

In the United States, Canada and other countries around the world, issue numbers never took hold and are very rarely found on credit cards or debit cards. In the UK and Europe, they are becoming increasingly rare and you would struggle to find a brand new credit card that still comes with an issue number today. The issue number is always found on the front of a credit card or debit card.

They are not the same thing! If a card was lost or expired, a new one would be sent out with the same account number but with an issue number on the end, starting with 0 or 1 for most cards. Visa Card Issue Numbers. Visa cards — Begin with a 4 and have 13 or 16 digits. Mastercard cards — Begin with a 5 and has 16 digits.

American Express cards — Begin with a 3, followed by a 4 or a 7 has 15 digits. Discover cards — Begin with a 6 and have 16 digits. When combined with the first digit, the next 5 digits of a credit card number identify the card issuer for any given Visa. The subsequent 8 numbers are part of your account number. These numbers make the card unique to the cardholder. Finally, the last digit is a security measure.

Issue numbers are one- or two-digit numbers that read "1" or "01" with the first issue of a card. If no number looks like this in the locations mentioned, the card does not have an issue number. The second issue of a card would read "2" or "02" and the numbers would go up with each re-issue. Today, because the credit or debit card number changes when a new card is issued, there's no longer a need for an issue number.

With the evolution of computer databases over the past few decades, it is easier to track customer accounts than ever before.

Therefore, banks and credit card companies do not need an issue number in their internal systems. Even though the card number changes with every re-issue, an internal ID number for these institutions remains the same for the life of the credit or debit card, which links the different cards and accounts of one person.

Customers may never know what this number is, as it is not used outside of the institution that generated the card. Nevertheless, these internal ID numbers add an extra layer of security for the customer. There are likely very few MasterCard issue numbers still in existence. In the UK, Switch was a popular debit card payment system with issue numbers.