ISO/IEC 7812
standard
ISO/IEC 7812 Identification cards – Identification of issuers is an international standard published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It specifies "a numbering system for the identification of the card issuers, the format of the issuer identification number (IIN) and the primary account number (PAN)", and procedures for registering IINs. It was first published in 1989.
ISO/IEC 7812 has two parts:
Part 1: Numbering system
Part 2: Application and registration procedures
The registration authority for Issuer Identification Numbers (IINs) is the American Bankers Association.
An IIN was previously limited to six digits in length. The leading digit is the major industry identifier (MII), followed by 5 digits, which together make up the IIN. This IIN is paired with an individual account identification number, and a single digit checksum.
In 2015, ISO TC68/SC9 began work on implementing a change to ISO/IEC 7812 to increase the length of the IIN to 8 digits. The 2017 revision of the standard, since updated by the 2022 systematic review, defined the new eight-digit IIN and outlined a timeline for conversion of existing six digits IINs to eight-digit IINs.
In February 2024, CUSIP Global Services, the US National Number Agency for securities identifiers, assumed administrative responsibility for 7812 on behalf of the ABA.
Major industry identifier
The first (leading) digit of the IIN identifies the major industry of the card issuer.
ISO 7812-1 (section 4.2) makes note of some special ranges that do not follow the general 6/8 digit IIN scheme:
Card numbers starting with "80" or "9" are followed by the three-digit numeric-3 country code from ISO 3166-1, shown as CCC above.
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