BIN 257305 (United Arab Emirates, Mastercard) - What It Works On
Where it cleared without drama: Google Play, Epic Games Store, Steam. All three passed first time and survived a renewal four weeks later.
We keep coming back to 257305 when a merchant blocks the well-known virtual ranges. It comes from TapX Card in United Arab Emirates and does not sit on the usual blocklists.
What the six digits say
- BIN
- 257305
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- United Arab Emirates
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- TapX Card
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Not published
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Self-custody
- Funding methods
- Crypto
- Max cards per account
- Not published
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium-High
The money side
The signup cost is easy to compare and mostly irrelevant. What follows you around is no top-up fee, with a 1.5% conversion fee sitting behind it. Nobody advertises the decline fee, so we list it. That is the number that surprises people.
| Card creation fee | Varies by tier |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | None (prepaid) |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | 1.50% (cross-currency); 0% same-currency |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Merchant by merchant
Everything we pushed through this range, including the merchants it never cleared.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Play | 34 | 31 | 91% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| Epic Games Store | 27 | 23 | 85% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| Steam | 21 | 18 | 86% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| Crunchyroll | 13 | 0 | 0% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
| Hulu | 12 | 4 | 33% | AVS mismatch. The ZIP on file did not match the address registered to the card. |
Run from a United Arab Emirates-region account between 09 Jul to 27 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
One consistent miss: Crunchyroll. That acquirer appears to blocklist the range. Hulu also declined, though only once.
What to change before you retry
- Crunchyroll: 0 of 13 cleared. Billing runs monthly in USD from the account's store region. Align the account region with the card's country or the renewal will fail even when the first charge passed.
- Hulu: 4 of 12 cleared. Hulu is US-only and rejects foreign ranges at the authorisation step. No configuration fixes this; use a US-issued range.
Before you try it
- Our risk rating for this issuer is on the high side. Keep balances low and do not park money on the card between charges.
- Paste the United Arab Emirates billing address TapX Card generates rather than typing your own. One transposed digit is enough to fail the check.
- Funding is crypto-first. Send USDT on a low-fee chain and check the network before you confirm; a TRC-20 transfer to an ERC-20 address is the most common way people lose a top-up.
What the numbers add up to
If you only need one subscription this is more than enough. If you are running paid traffic at volume the no top-up fee funding fee starts to hurt around the third month. The one thing we would change is the funding fee. Everything else about it is fine.
FAQ
What does the 257305 BIN tell a merchant?
It tells the risk engine three things before your bank is ever contacted: issuer TapX Card, country of issue United Arab Emirates, product class Debit. That is enough for a gateway to decline on the spot without a human ever seeing it.
Is 257305 a real card number?
It is the first six of sixteen digits. The remaining ten identify the account, and only TapX Card can map those. A BIN alone will never get anyone into your money.
Why would 257305 be declined if the range is fine?
Of the 107 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 257305.
Can thousands of people share the same BIN?
That is the normal case. Every Debit card TapX Card issues in United Arab Emirates carries the same six digits. Two people on 257305 can get opposite results at the same checkout, which is why a single review is never conclusive.
Test setup
We bought a TapX Card card, funded it, and pushed 107 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 09 Jul to 27 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 76 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 31 August 2026 · 107 charges on record for this range.