BIN 261129 (United Arab Emirates, Mastercard) - What It Works On
Tested across 4 weeks. Epic Games Store, App Store, Google Play held at or above 110 passes, and the failures clustered on two merchants only.
Range check: 261129, Mastercard, United Arab Emirates, Credit, issuer Union Bank Virtual Card. Below is the cost breakdown and the merchants where it held up.
261129 in plain terms
- BIN
- 261129
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- United Arab Emirates
- Card type
- Credit
- Issued by
- Union Bank Virtual Card
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Not published
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Not published
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- Not published
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium
Running costs
Three lines decide it. Issuance: no issuance fee. Funding: no top-up fee. Conversion: no FX markup. We checked these against the issuer's own pricing page, not a reseller. Resellers usually add a margin.
| Card creation fee | Free (virtual) |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | — |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Results by merchant
This table is the whole record: every attempt we made on the range, with the gateway's answer attached.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epic Games Store | 49 | 44 | 90% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| App Store | 40 | 36 | 90% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| Google Play | 31 | 25 | 81% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| GOAT | 20 | 0 | 0% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
| Tidal | 15 | 5 | 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 22 Jul to 19 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
The weak spot is GOAT, which declined every time. Everything else was either clean or fixed by correcting the billing address.
What to change before you retry
- GOAT: 0 of 20 cleared. Same mechanic as StockX: funds are captured on seller acceptance. Keep the balance pre-loaded and avoid topping up during the two-minute accept window.
- Tidal: 5 of 15 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.
Do these first
- 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.
- 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.
- Paste the United Arab Emirates billing address Union Bank Virtual Card generates rather than typing your own. One transposed digit is enough to fail the check.
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. Ranked on cost alone it sits mid-table. Ranked on consistency it moves up a few places.
BIN questions, answered
What does the 261129 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads Union Bank Virtual Card / United Arab Emirates / Credit 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 261129 a real card number?
It is the first six of sixteen digits. The remaining ten identify the account, and only Union Bank Virtual Card can map those. A BIN alone will never get anyone into your money.
Why would 261129 be declined if the range is fine?
Of the 155 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 261129.
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.
What we did
We bought a Union Bank Virtual Card card, funded it, and pushed 155 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 22 Jul to 19 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 110 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 27 August 2026 · 155 charges on record for this range.