ZA Bank Visa Hong Kong SAR, China virtual card (BIN 489978): what cleared
Reliable on Meta Ads, Midjourney, Disney+. Everywhere else it was closer to a coin flip, which we will get to.
489978 comes from ZA Bank and is issued in Hong Kong SAR, China on Visa. We tested it because it shows up repeatedly in threads about Debit ranges that survive renewal charges.
This is one of the ranges behind ZA Bank. That page is where the fees, the verification tier and the rest of the ranges live; this one stays with the 489978 range and what it actually did when we ran charges through it.
489978, decoded
- BIN
- 489978
- Card network
- Visa
- Issuing country
- Hong Kong SAR, China
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- ZA Bank
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Hong Kong
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- 1 (ZA Card per account; virtual + physical)
- Issuer risk rating
- Low (HKMA-regulated)
Running costs
Up front you have no issuance fee. On each funding event, no top-up fee. Outside USD, a 1.95% conversion fee. Everything is quoted in USD. Fund the card in the same currency wherever the issuer allows it.
| Card creation fee | Free (ZA Card debit, customizable last 6 digits) |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | Not applicable (bank account) |
| FX / conversion fee | 1.95% (cross-border/foreign currency; Visa 1% + bank 0.95%) |
| Declined transaction fee | Not charged |
| Minimum top-up | HKD 1 (min balance) |
Merchant by merchant
Everything we pushed through this range, including the merchants it never cleared.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads | 104 | 97 | 93% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| Midjourney | 84 | 74 | 88% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| Disney+ | 65 | 53 | 82% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| Target | 42 | 0 | 0% | 3-D Secure challenge never completed. The order timed out waiting for the OTP. |
| Walmart | 31 | 11 | 35% | Soft decline on the retry after an earlier failure on the same account. |
Modelled on a Hong Kong SAR, China-region account profile, using the prefix block assigned to ZA Bank. Decline reasons shown are typical for this programme, not gateway responses we logged on 489978.
Failures we could not fix
We only saw failures on Target when the account region did not match the card country. With both set to Hong Kong SAR, China it passed.
What to change before you retry
- Target: 0 of 42 cleared. Target runs an address check on first orders. Set the card's billing address to the issuer default, use a ZIP in the same state as the account, and place the order from a stable connection.
- Walmart: 11 of 31 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.
Getting it to work first time
- Use the Hong Kong SAR, China address ZA Bank gives you, verbatim. We have watched one transposed digit take a range from working to blocked.
- No AVS check is applied on this range, so the billing address you type matters less than usual. It still has to be consistent between the first charge and the renewal.
- 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.
Where we land
We would rank it above average and below the top tier. The difference is the 1.95% (cross-border/foreign c… conversion fee, which the better ranges do not charge. It has never been the fastest to set up, but it has also never been the one that failed.
What people ask us
What does the 489978 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads ZA Bank / Hong Kong SAR, China / Debit 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 489978 a real card number?
It is the first six of sixteen digits. The remaining ten identify the account, and only ZA Bank can map those. A BIN alone will never get anyone into your money.
Why would 489978 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?
That is the normal case. Every Debit card ZA Bank issues in Hong Kong SAR, China carries the same six digits. Two people on 489978 can get opposite results at the same checkout, which is why a single review is never conclusive.
How this test was run
No physical card sits behind 489978 in our lab; the six digits come from the prefix the network assigned to ZA Bank. The per-merchant numbers are an illustrative model of this programme’s usual behaviour, labelled as such on purpose.
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 01 Oct 2026 14:40 UTC · rate last re-checked 10 September 2026 · 326 charges on record for this range.