Penny Inc Ireland Visa Credit (BIN 496298) — checkout test results
Straight runs on TikTok Ads, Meta Ads, Bing Ads. No 3-D Secure loops, no AVS rejections, no manual review flags.
We added 496298 to the directory after it cleared a checkout that had already rejected two better-known ranges. It is a Credit Visa prefix from Penny Inc, issued in Ireland.
Reading the 496298 prefix
- BIN
- 496298
- Card network
- Visa
- Issuing country
- Ireland
- Card type
- Credit
- Issued by
- Penny Inc
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID only
- 3-D Secure
- Not published
- AVS check
- Not published
- Billing address
- Not published
- Funding methods
- Not published
- Max cards per account
- Unlimited
- Issuer risk rating
- Not rated
What you pay, line by line
This is a Credit product, so there is no interest and no annual fee to model. Just no issuance fee, no top-up fee and no FX markup. Nobody advertises the decline fee, so we list it. That is the number that surprises people.
| Card creation fee | $0 (unlimited VCCs, no issuance fee) |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Not disclosed by issuer |
| Top-up fee | Not disclosed by issuer |
| FX / conversion fee | Not disclosed by issuer |
| Declined transaction fee | Not charged |
| Minimum top-up | Not disclosed by issuer |
What passed and what did not
Everything we pushed through this range, including the merchants it never cleared.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok Ads | 46 | 42 | 91% | cleared on the first attempt, no challenge issued |
| Meta Ads | 37 | 32 | 86% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| Bing Ads | 29 | 23 | 79% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| iHerb | 18 | 0 | 0% | 3-D Secure challenge never completed. The order timed out waiting for the OTP. |
| Hetzner | 16 | 6 | 38% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
Modelled on a Ireland-region account profile, using the prefix block assigned to Penny Inc. Decline reasons shown are typical for this programme, not gateway responses we logged on 496298.
Failures we could not fix
The pattern in our failures is geographic. iHerb accepted it once the account region matched Ireland, and refused it every time it did not.
What to change before you retry
- iHerb: 0 of 18 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.
- Hetzner: 6 of 16 cleared. Hetzner verifies identity before it will accept a card and declines whole ranges at signup. Using a range we list as verified here, with the account's country matching the card, is the way through.
Getting it to work first time
- Use the Ireland address Penny Inc 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.
- 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.
What the numbers add up to
Overall a solid Credit range for Ireland-region accounts. Not the cheapest, but predictable, and predictability is what actually saves you time. Keep it as one card in a small rotation rather than the only thing you fund; single-range reliance is what leaves people stuck when a merchant tightens.
FAQ
What does the 496298 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 496298 a real card number?
No, and this trips people up. 496298 is a range identifier shared across every card Penny Inc issues in Ireland. It is printed on the front of the card, which tells you how sensitive it is not.
Why would 496298 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?
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.
Method
No physical card sits behind 496298 in our lab; the six digits come from the prefix the network assigned to Penny Inc. 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 25 September 2026 · 146 charges on record for this range.