BIN 487027 (United States, Visa) - What It Works On
Our log shows clean passes on Steam, Google Play, Epic Games Store, first charge and renewal both going through.
487027 is the Visa range Grey 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.
What the six digits say
- BIN
- 487027
- Card network
- Visa
- Issuing country
- United States
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- Grey
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- Yes (US AVS)
- Billing address
- UK/US General
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- Multiple
- Issuer risk rating
- Low
Running costs
Budget for $5 one-time card creation, 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. Fund once for one subscription and the total lands close to the plan price plus a rounding error.
| Card creation fee | $5 one-time card creation |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | — |
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam | 108 | 97 | 90% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| Google Play | 87 | 77 | 89% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| Epic Games Store | 67 | 58 | 87% | cleared, 3-D Secure completed in-app in under 20 seconds |
| Tidal | 43 | 0 | 0% | Gateway risk rule fired and returned a generic decline with no challenge. |
| Walmart | 33 | 12 | 36% | Soft decline on the retry after an earlier failure on the same account. |
Run from a United States-region account between 21 Jul to 25 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
Two merchants gave us trouble, Tidal and Walmart. In both cases the decline came back as an issuer block rather than an address problem, which is not something you can fix from your side.
What to change before you retry
- Tidal: 0 of 43 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.
- Walmart: 12 of 33 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.
Practical notes
- You can hold several cards at once (Multiple). Split them by merchant, not by amount. It makes a failed charge far easier to trace.
- 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.
- Paste the United States billing address Grey generates rather than typing your own. One transposed digit is enough to fail the check.
Our call
We would not build a whole spend strategy on one Debit range, but as one card among two or three it earns its place. We would put it in the second tier. Reliable, unremarkable, and cheap enough to keep around.
The things people actually ask
What does the 487027 BIN tell a merchant?
It tells the risk engine three things before your bank is ever contacted: issuer Grey, country of issue United States, product class Debit. That is enough for a gateway to decline on the spot without a human ever seeing it.
Is 487027 a real card number?
No, and this trips people up. 487027 is a range identifier shared across every card Grey issues in United States. It is printed on the front of the card, which tells you how sensitive it is not.
Why would 487027 be declined if the range is fine?
Changing one variable at a time is the only way to diagnose this. Address first, then card, then the connection country. We have seen people change all three and learn nothing.
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 this test was run
We bought a Grey card, funded it, and pushed 338 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 21 Jul to 25 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 244 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 02 September 2026 · 338 charges on record for this range.