BIN 518504: Ireland Mastercard Virtual Card (Debit)
The three places it never failed: Epic Games Store, App Store, Google Play. Everything above 90% success in the log traces back to those.
We keep coming back to 518504 when a merchant blocks the well-known virtual ranges. It comes from Zebec Carbon in Ireland and does not sit on the usual blocklists.
What the six digits say
- BIN
- 518504
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- Ireland
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- Zebec Carbon
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- No KYC
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Not published
- Funding methods
- Crypto
- Max cards per account
- Not published
- Issuer risk rating
- High
Running costs
Budget for no issuance fee, 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. We checked these against the issuer's own pricing page, not a reseller. Resellers usually add a margin.
| Card creation fee | Free |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | 0% |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
Results by merchant
Attempts counted per merchant by hand from the log, so a single declined order does not skew the rate.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epic Games Store | 40 | 38 | 95% | cleared, 3-D Secure completed in-app in under 20 seconds |
| App Store | 32 | 27 | 84% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| Google Play | 25 | 21 | 84% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| iHerb | 16 | 0 | 0% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
| Crunchyroll | 12 | 4 | 33% | Range blocked at the acquirer. Declined before the authorisation was even routed. |
Run from a Ireland-region account between 01 Jul to 02 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
Failures were rare but real: iHerb declined on three attempts, and we never did get it through.
What to change before you retry
- iHerb: 0 of 16 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.
- Crunchyroll: 4 of 12 cleared. Billing runs monthly in USD from the account's store region. Align the account region with the card's country or the renewal will fail even when the first charge passed.
Setup notes for Zebec Carbon
- Funding is crypto-first. Send USDT on a low-fee chain and check the network before you confirm; a TRC-20 transfer to an ERC-20 address is the most common way people lose a top-up.
- Use the Ireland address Zebec Carbon gives you, verbatim. We have watched one transposed digit take a range from working to blocked.
- 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.
Final word
This is the range I would give someone who has never used a virtual card. Low balance requirement and the failure modes are easy to diagnose. If you find a merchant where it behaves differently, tell us and we will add it to the log.
BIN questions, answered
What does the 518504 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads Zebec Carbon / Ireland / 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 518504 a real card number?
No, and this trips people up. 518504 is a range identifier shared across every card Zebec Carbon issues in Ireland. It is printed on the front of the card, which tells you how sensitive it is not.
Why would 518504 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.
Test setup
We bought a Zebec Carbon card, funded it, and pushed 125 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 01 Jul to 02 Sep 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 90 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 · 125 charges on record for this range.