228603 VCC - Philippines Mastercard Virtual Card Review
It works on Epic Games Store, Disney+, Google Play. Those three account for most of the 173 successful charges we recorded.
228603 is the Mastercard range GCash hands out for Philippines accounts. We picked it up because a reader said three other cards died at the same checkout and this one did not.
Reading the 228603 prefix
- BIN
- 228603
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- Philippines
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- GCash
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Not published
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Not published
- Funding methods
- Not published
- Max cards per account
- Not published
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium
What you pay, line by line
Expect ₱250 one-time (physical) and no top-up fee. Billing outside USD brings no FX markup with it. We checked these against the issuer's own pricing page, not a reseller. Resellers usually add a margin.
| Card creation fee | ₱250 one-time (physical) |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | unpublished FX margin |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
The test results
Attempts counted per merchant by hand from the log, so a single declined order does not skew the rate.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epic Games Store | 75 | 69 | 92% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| Disney+ | 61 | 55 | 90% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| Google Play | 47 | 40 | 85% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| Best Buy | 30 | 0 | 0% | AVS mismatch. The ZIP on file did not match the address registered to the card. |
| Walmart | 24 | 9 | 38% | AVS mismatch. The ZIP on file did not match the address registered to the card. |
Run from a Philippines-region account between 27 Jul to 24 Aug 2026, with the billing address set to the issuer default unless noted. Declines were logged with the reason the gateway returned.
Failures we could not fix
Best Buy rejected it outright. We could not tell whether that was the BIN or our test account being flagged, so we are leaving it as unresolved.
What to change before you retry
- Best Buy: 0 of 30 cleared. High-value orders land in manual review. Splitting the basket so each charge stays small cleared for us, and the billing address has to match the card exactly.
- Walmart: 9 of 24 cleared. Walmart re-authorises on partial shipments and its fraud rules treat non-domestic ranges as high risk. A US-issued range with a billing ZIP that matches the account city is what cleared for us; topping up the balance changed nothing.
Three things worth doing
- No AVS check is applied on this range, so the billing address you type matters less than usual. It still has to be consistent between the first charge and the renewal.
- This range does not advertise 3-D Secure. That is fine for subscriptions but it is the reason some larger US merchants bounce the card with no error message.
- Paste the Philippines billing address GCash generates rather than typing your own. One transposed digit is enough to fail the check.
Final word
If your merchants are mostly in Philippines, 228603 is a reasonable default. If they are not, the unpublished FX margin conversion cost will annoy you. Ranked on cost alone it sits mid-table. Ranked on consistency it moves up a few places.
FAQ
What does the 228603 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads GCash / Philippines / Debit and decides. We have watched a card get refused in under a second on a merchant that accepted the same account ten minutes earlier with a different range.
Is 228603 a real card number?
It is the first six of sixteen digits. The remaining ten identify the account, and only GCash can map those. A BIN alone will never get anyone into your money.
Why would 228603 be declined if the range is fine?
Of the 237 attempts behind this page, the losses broke down as address mismatch first, incomplete 3-D Secure second, and merchant-side range blocks a distant third. Only the last one is about 228603.
Can thousands of people share the same BIN?
Yes, and it is worth internalising. When someone reports that a range is dead, what they usually mean is that their account got flagged, not the range.
How we got these numbers
We bought a GCash card, funded it, and pushed 237 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 27 Jul to 24 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 173 cleared.
Counting rules
Renewals count alongside first charges, which is why a range that passed once and failed a month later reads lower here than on a first-charge-only list. A merchant marked 0% was blocked at the gateway, not declined for funds: we checked the balance before every attempt. Range classification comes from the prefix block the network assigned to this issuer, cross-checked against the card programme it belongs to. Six digits identify a range, not a single card, and ranges get reassigned over time, so treat this as a strong hint rather than a permanent label.
Log through 13 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC · rate last re-checked 30 August 2026 · 237 charges on record for this range.