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Japan facing credit card number shortage

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Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#171

Post by Trav5 »

jessriedel wrote: post #84
dqv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should. There are so many adults who think it's cute to make up their own phonetics not realizing the whole purpose is to reduce ambiguity, not make it fun to spell things aloud.

As an adult who tries to remember the NATO phonetic alphabet but can't because I only use it once per month, I don't make up words "for fun" or "to be cute". I do it because I can't remember the NATO word. Compared to just saying the letters, the words I choose certainly do reduce ambiguity, even if using the NATO alphabet would go even further.

Same, but once every 2 years. Just email me for goodness sake!

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#172

Post by lmz »

cdongrun wrote: post #143
bleepblorp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually every country other than the United States uses a cryptographic NFC and/or chip and pin system for in-person credit/debit transactions. In most countries, the card number is only used for online and phone transactions. There's probably no way to do better than this without abandoning cards entirely in favor of some kind of device (or app) that has enough of a user interface to do a human-readable challenge…

the us has had nfc and chip for years. we still support swiping too. your statement was true for a few short years when europe did chip first. which was much easier there, since credit cards were not as common, and didn't exist since 1950 like in america. we don't use a pin, because that doesn't help with fraud. most fraud is either online, or someone at the store, who can easily skim or see your pin. online you can…

Technically true, yet POS support for chip transactions is still a bit less widespread, no?

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#173

Post by rswail »

lmm wrote: post #97
jandrese wrote: post #6

Assuming the last digit is a checksum and the first six are taken by the routing information, that leaves them 9 digits or a billion possible numbers per credit card issuer. Japan has a population of about 125 million. Are Japanese people cycling their numbers so frequently? Or are they big on ephemeral card numbers? Is it not possible for an issuer to get a second prefix if they run out of digits? I also wonder if c…

> Assuming the last digit is a checksum and the first six are taken by the routing information, that leaves them 9 digits or a billion possible numbers per credit card issuer. Japan has a population of about 125 million. Are Japanese people cycling their numbers so frequently? Or are they big on ephemeral card numbers? Credit cards - and payment methods generally - are in their Cambrian explosion phase right now in J…

Most of these "branded" cards will have an underlying issuing bank/acquirer, not their own identification on the card.

The way that the 16 digits are allocated is defined as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number#Structure

So of the 16 digits for the majority of cards:

Digit 1-6(8): Scheme and issuer identification Digits 7-15: Account identification Digit 16: Check digit (Luhn algorithm)

So most issuers have 10 digits to "play with" to identify the account.

So Japan is either running out of issuer identifiers, which sounds excessive, or they have been allocating them badly.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#174

Post by rswail »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
chrischen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cards can have nfc, and most people already have nfc readers in the form of phones. I think this is the easiest way to support cryptographic payments.

I’m honestly surprised the move to contactless hasn’t occurred faster, as the costs for hardware seem lower for nfc versus chip.

It only hasn't moved in the US. In Australia, nearly all CC transactions are contactless, with the floor limit at AUD100 (USD70).

During the pandemic, I haven't used cash for the last 6 months.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#175

Post by lmm »

rswail wrote: post #173
lmm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming the last digit is a checksum and the first six are taken by the routing information, that leaves them 9 digits or a billion possible numbers per credit card issuer. Japan has a population of about 125 million. Are Japanese people cycling their numbers so frequently? Or are they big on ephemeral card numbers? Credit cards - and payment methods generally - are in their Cambrian explosion phase right now in J…

Most of these "branded" cards will have an underlying issuing bank/acquirer, not their own identification on the card. The way that the 16 digits are allocated is defined as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number#Structure So of the 16 digits for the majority of cards: Digit 1-6(8): Scheme and issuer identification Digits 7-15: Account identification Digit 16: Check digit (Luhn algorithm) So most issue…

Sure, but if I have 8 different cards issued by SMBC then that's still 8 cards.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#176

Post by rswail »

segmondy wrote: post #68
donor20 wrote: post #30

This is a ridiculous story. Japan has a population of 150M. If you can't give folks a number from SIXTEEN digits - something is wrong with the folks giving out the numbers. Some answers to the excuses. The 6 digits at front, if a company legit runs out of numbers, ask for another prefix. The reality. Instead of using the numbers properly (random ID to tie to a user account) they are probably putting some kind of stru…

Your comment is ridiculous. The number has structure, you don't get random IP addresses if you're a company. You get a block, likewise card issuers get a block (BIN - Bank Identifier Number) then add in the checksum, that definitely means you can't just assign random number. Imagine you have a random number. Visa get's the number and a charge for $20. Who owns it? They now have to search through all possible issued c…

What the OP said was that even with a 6 digit BIN and 1 digit check, you have 9 digits available per BIN.

For example, Mastercards start in the range 51 to 55. That leaves 4 digits of the 6 digit BIN to allocate to MC issuers. So that's a total of 50K issuers of MC world wide, then each of those issuers can have 1 billion cards.

So each issuer of a MC in Japan can issue a card to each member of the population and only use an eighth of their allocated range.

The problem isn't the individual card account ID, from the article, it sounds like Japan has been allocating too many BINs.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#177

Post by netflixandkill »

saas_sam wrote: post #3
gruez wrote: post #2

>the company decided to take makeshift measures such as reusing credit card numbers of discontinued cards after a certain period had passed since cardholders canceled their memberships. However, there are considerable risks of fraudulent usage What are the risks here, and why aren't they already present by someone generating credit card numbers with a RNG? AFAIK credit card transactions are authenticated by at least…

What if they switched CC numbers TO IPV6 addresses? Insane or genius?

To addresses? Mostly pointless. To a larger number space that had non-numeric representation, genius and probably inevitable.

If we allow for the representation to be 0-9 and then another ten letters selected for uniqueness and clarity, overlapped with appropriate non-roman pictographs, etc, the same 16 characters jumps to 600 quintillion range, or about 60 bits by napkin math.

That's more than realistically enough for hundred billion people to each have millions of real payment IDs with millions more one-time use ones that contained some sort of transaction hash for authorization.

Which conveniently fits in a 64 bit word with some left over. I suspect someone involved in the payment space already figured that out a long time ago, but no cataclysmic event has yet happened to de-rail the existing money train.

If you wanted to do that in IPv6 you'd still have the upper 64 bits left over :)

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#178

Post by donor20 »

segmondy wrote: post #68
donor20 wrote: post #30

This is a ridiculous story. Japan has a population of 150M. If you can't give folks a number from SIXTEEN digits - something is wrong with the folks giving out the numbers. Some answers to the excuses. The 6 digits at front, if a company legit runs out of numbers, ask for another prefix. The reality. Instead of using the numbers properly (random ID to tie to a user account) they are probably putting some kind of stru…

Your comment is ridiculous. The number has structure, you don't get random IP addresses if you're a company. You get a block, likewise card issuers get a block (BIN - Bank Identifier Number) then add in the checksum, that definitely means you can't just assign random number. Imagine you have a random number. Visa get's the number and a charge for $20. Who owns it? They now have to search through all possible issued c…

I hope you are trolling.

You understand that every possible prefix / range has a billion numbers minimum? That japans population is only 125 million?

And actually - you can near randomly assign numbers if you wanted, looking up card issuer is not difficult. Can basically issue card numbers in blocks of 100 if you wanted to reduce lookup tables a bit. This is already happening and available actually. Visa and other (apple) offer tokenization services to randomize your card number. Every phone number uses this type of system to enable number portability as well (you can take your phone number from t-mobile to sprint).

With 16 digits (1,234,567,890,123,456) you have 999 trillion numbers you can assign. As my original comment pointed out, the idea that we are running out of credit card numbers is absolutely ridiculous.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#179

Post by donor20 »

lmilcin wrote: post #54
donor20 wrote: post #30

This is a ridiculous story. Japan has a population of 150M. If you can't give folks a number from SIXTEEN digits - something is wrong with the folks giving out the numbers. Some answers to the excuses. The 6 digits at front, if a company legit runs out of numbers, ask for another prefix. The reality. Instead of using the numbers properly (random ID to tie to a user account) they are probably putting some kind of stru…

This story is ridiculous for another reasons. I worked for card payment (implemented credit card terminal application, internalized couple thousand pages of requirements). Credit card numbers are assigned by payment organizations in the form of prefixes (BINs -- https://binlist.net/ , https://www.bindb.com/bin-list.html ) The worst that will happen is that Visa/Mastercard will issue more BINs to those organizations.…

Exactly, but the idea that with a billion numbers to issue they can't get 100 million folks into the structure - that's also silly.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#180

Post by hrktb »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #170
i386 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very US centric. In every other place except America, credit card issuers mandate the use EMV’s and pin codes.

How does that chip work online? As far as I know, CCs around the world still depend on numbers. For what it’s worth, in the US, chip is pretty much everywhere. Main difference is that it’s chip and signature vs chip and pin. I wish we’d switch to pins as well, but it’s not like it’s the dark ages or anything.

You need a 2FA style confirmation code for online transactions.
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