Posted on: 05:00 Mon, 24 Mar 2014


There are secrets you should know about the VISA or MASTERCARD in your hand. The first six digits of credit/debit card shows the country of origin, issuing bank name and whether it’s VISA or MasterCard when you search their Binbase.

So, you can now see why credit card processors reject some country’s credit or debit cards because VISA or Mastercard server will always tell the processor where the payment is coming from.

This is how online payments with VISA or Mastercard work:

1. You go to any good site, insert your card details and click on Buy Now.

2. The online processing software carries the data in secured packet and transfer to VISA or Mastercard server.

3. VISA or Mastercard transfer securely to the issuing bank server.

4. The issuing bank check their database to verify if there are positive balance in such card or account.

5. Once confirmed, the issuing bank transfers back to VISA or Mastercard.

6. VISA / Mastercard transfer data to site’s online processing software to either honour or reject such payment. All these happen in couple of seconds.

So, when making payment you should know that the credit or debit card processor knows where you card came from. It depends on what the processors allowed to pass through that makes certain payments to either be honoured or rejected.
Certain sites that rejects Nigerians always tighten their processors to reject both Nigerian IPs and VISA or Mastercard Binbase that originates from Nigeria.

We will not go deeper into how bank secure the cards they give you. But the reason why Non-Personalized Africard from UBA works better than GTB Naira Mastercard is because UBA Non-Personalised VISA card came from a USA VISA card agent and it has USA Binbase but GTB secured their Naira Mastercard as Mastercard agent directly from Mastercard.

So, it has Nigeria Binbase. UBA is operating under another company in the USA. That was why Facebook and Google accept their Non-Personalize VISA cards without issues.
Equally, no VISA or Mastercrd works 100%.

It’s just like your International Passport. If you carry Nigerian Passport you maybe rejected entrance into lots of developed countries. Likewise, if you carry USA Passport you will be granted lots of access but get rejected in Iran, North Korea and other countries.

That is how the VISA and Mastercard in your hand works.
So, when using any VISA or Mastercard online (whether Plastic or Virtual), make sure:

- That you use same country IP for the same country billing address. For example, if you are using Nigerian billing address, you need to use Nigerian IP from Glo, MTN, Airtel, Etisalat, Swift, etc.

- If you are using USA cards, get a VPN from Please login or Register to view link or any other and use USA billing address.