Mastercard Virtual Card BIN 256304 - United Kingdom (Debit)
Where it cleared without drama: Google Play, App Store, Epic Games Store. All three passed first time and survived a renewal four weeks later.
The first thing to know about 256304 is that it is not an anonymous range. Monzo issues it in United Kingdom and the Mastercard prefix is registered, which is why fewer merchants treat it as high risk.
What 256304 actually is
- BIN
- 256304
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- United Kingdom
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- Monzo
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- Yes (UK AVS)
- Billing address
- UK General
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- Up to 5 live virtual cards; max 9 new per 30 days, 100/year
- Issuer risk rating
- Low-Medium
What you pay, line by line
Budget for no issuance fee, no top-up fee, and a no decline fee penalty on declined authorizations. That last one only matters if you are pushing a lot of small charges. Compare on funding cost rather than signup fee. The funding side is what you pay every month for years.
| Card creation fee | Free (with Monzo account) |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free (standard account) |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | No FX fees |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Where 256304 clears, and where it does not
Merchant by merchant, in the order we charged them. The rates below count renewals as well as first charges.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Play | 40 | 37 | 92% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| App Store | 33 | 29 | 88% | cleared on the first attempt, no challenge issued |
| Epic Games Store | 25 | 21 | 84% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| Nike US | 16 | 0 | 0% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
| iHerb | 13 | 4 | 31% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
Run from a United Kingdom-region account between 27 Jul to 31 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
If you buy from Nike US, use something else. It declined consistently. iHerb was fine on retry.
What to change before you retry
- Nike US: 0 of 16 cleared. Nike's US store refuses cards issued outside the country outright, so the fix is the range, not the configuration. A domestic-issued range clears; a foreign one never will.
- iHerb: 4 of 13 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.
Practical notes
- Paste the United Kingdom billing address Monzo generates rather than typing your own. One transposed digit is enough to fail the check.
- 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.
- Your tier allows 5 cards. Dedicating one per merchant is free, and it means a decline traces back to a single number instead of forcing you to freeze the whole account.
Verdict, briefly
Worth having as a backup rather than a primary. When a merchant blocks the popular ranges, 256304 is usually still open. Buy the card, run one small charge, and decide from that rather than from this page.
BIN questions, answered
What does the 256304 BIN tell a merchant?
Roughly: who issued it, where, and what kind of product it is. Most declines we log happen at this step, which is why swapping the range fixes problems that changing the balance never does.
Is 256304 a real card number?
Six digits of a sixteen-digit number. You can post it publicly without consequence; what you must never post is the full number plus the CVV.
Why would 256304 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?
That is the normal case. Every Debit card Monzo issues in United Kingdom carries the same six digits. Two people on 256304 can get opposite results at the same checkout, which is why a single review is never conclusive.
Method
We bought a Monzo card, funded it, and pushed 127 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 27 Jul to 31 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 91 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 03 September 2026 · 127 charges on record for this range.