BIN 238389: United States Mastercard Virtual Card (Prepaid)
Reliable on Google Play, Steam, Epic Games Store. Everywhere else it was closer to a coin flip, which we will get to.
238389 is the Mastercard range Mesh Payments hands out for United States accounts. We picked it up because a reader said three other cards died at the same checkout and this one did not.
238389 in plain terms
- BIN
- 238389
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- United States
- Card type
- Prepaid
- Issued by
- Mesh Payments
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- Business KYC
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- Yes (US AVS)
- Billing address
- US/EU
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- Unlimited
- Issuer risk rating
- Low
The fee stack
Expect no issuance fee and no top-up fee. Billing outside USD brings no FX markup with it. Compare on funding cost rather than signup fee. The funding side is what you pay every month for years.
| Card creation fee | Free |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free (platform free, unlimited cards/users) |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | — |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Where 238389 clears, and where it does not
Everything we pushed through this range, including the merchants it never cleared.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Play | 29 | 26 | 90% | cleared, 3-D Secure completed in-app in under 20 seconds |
| Steam | 24 | 21 | 88% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| Epic Games Store | 18 | 15 | 83% | cleared on the first attempt, no challenge issued |
| Tidal | 12 | 0 | 0% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
| iHerb | 10 | 3 | 30% | 3-D Secure challenge never completed. The order timed out waiting for the OTP. |
Run from a United States-region account between 01 Aug to 05 Sep 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
We only saw failures on Tidal when the account region did not match the card country. With both set to United States it passed.
What to change before you retry
- Tidal: 0 of 12 cleared. Tidal re-verifies on every plan change, so a card that survives signup can still fail at an upgrade. Keep the address static between changes.
- iHerb: 3 of 10 cleared. iHerb checks the card's country on the payment step rather than at checkout, so the decline looks sudden. Fix the address first, then the range.
Before you try it
- Bank transfer is the cheap funding route here, but it is not instant. Top up a day before a renewal rather than the same morning.
- Use the United States address Mesh Payments gives you, verbatim. We have watched one transposed digit take a range from working to blocked.
- 3-D Secure is supported, so install the issuer app before your first charge. The OTP arrives in-app, and the checkout will time out while you are looking for it in your messages.
Verdict, briefly
Two things decide it. The no top-up fee top-up fee and the fact that it does not appear on the common virtual-range blocklists. Both work in its favour. For the price it is hard to argue with, provided you can live with the no top-up fee funding cost.
What people ask us
What does the 238389 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads Mesh Payments / United States / Prepaid 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 238389 a real card number?
No, and this trips people up. 238389 is a range identifier shared across every card Mesh Payments issues in United States. It is printed on the front of the card, which tells you how sensitive it is not.
Why would 238389 be declined if the range is fine?
Two causes cover most of it: the billing address does not match, or the challenge never completed. Both look identical on screen, and both are fixable in under a minute.
Can thousands of people share the same BIN?
Shared by design. Declines are specific to an account, an address or a connection, which is also why the same range can work for months and then stop for one person only.
What we did
We bought a Mesh Payments card, funded it, and pushed 93 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 01 Aug to 05 Sep 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 65 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 12 September 2026 · 93 charges on record for this range.