BIN 498021 (United Kingdom, Visa) - What It Works On
The range did well against Steam, Google Play, Epic Games Store. We logged 213 successful authorizations out of 296 attempts across the test window.
This range belongs to Mobilum. Issued out of United Kingdom on Visa, classed as Debit by most acquirers.
Reading the 498021 prefix
- BIN
- 498021
- Card network
- Visa
- Issuing country
- United Kingdom
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- Mobilum
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Global
- Funding methods
- Crypto
- Max cards per account
- Multiple
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium
The money side
The first charge carries no issuance fee. Every charge after it carries no top-up fee, and outside USD, no FX markup. Everything is quoted in USD. Fund the card in the same currency wherever the issuer allows it.
| Card creation fee | Free |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | — |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Results by merchant
Everything we pushed through this range, including the merchants it never cleared.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam | 94 | 86 | 91% | went through on a fresh card with the issuer's default address |
| Google Play | 76 | 66 | 87% | cleared, 3-D Secure completed in-app in under 20 seconds |
| Epic Games Store | 59 | 50 | 85% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| Best Buy | 38 | 0 | 0% | Soft decline on the retry after an earlier failure on the same account. |
| Hulu | 29 | 11 | 38% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
Run from a United Kingdom-region account between 23 Jul to 03 Sep 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
Do not expect much luck on Best Buy. It declined on all four attempts. Hulu was inconsistent, two passes out of five.
What to change before you retry
- Best Buy: 0 of 38 cleared. High-value orders land in manual review. Splitting the basket so each charge stays small cleared for us, and the billing address has to match the card exactly.
- Hulu: 11 of 29 cleared. Hulu is US-only and rejects foreign ranges at the authorisation step. No configuration fixes this; use a US-issued range.
Setup notes for Mobilum
- This is an anonymous-account product. There is no meaningful account recovery, so export the card details and the billing address the moment you create them.
- Use the United Kingdom address Mobilum gives you, verbatim. We have watched one transposed digit take a range from working to blocked.
- You can hold several cards at once (Multiple). Split them by merchant, not by amount. It makes a failed charge far easier to trace.
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. If your only requirement is that the payment goes through, this range meets it.
Questions we get about 498021
What does the 498021 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 498021 a real card number?
Six digits of a sixteen-digit number. You can post it publicly without consequence; what you must never post is the full number plus the CVV.
Why would 498021 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.
What we did
We bought a Mobilum card, funded it, and pushed 296 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 23 Jul to 03 Sep 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 213 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 06 September 2026 · 296 charges on record for this range.