BIN 520179: Ireland Mastercard Virtual Card (Credit)
105 of 147 attempts cleared, and most of those came from three merchants: YouTube Premium, Netflix, Disney+.
A reader asked us to check this FCMB Virtual Card range because a forum post claimed 520179 was dead. It is not. Here is what we found running it through real merchant checkouts.
520179 in plain terms
- BIN
- 520179
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- Ireland
- Card type
- Credit
- Issued by
- FCMB Virtual Card
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Not published
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- Not published
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- 2
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium
The fee stack
Pricing, laid out: an undisclosed issuance fee to open a card, no top-up fee every time you fund it, and no FX markup on conversion. Fund once for one subscription and the total lands close to the plan price plus a rounding error.
| Card creation fee | — |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | — |
| Top-up fee | — |
| FX / conversion fee | — |
| Declined transaction fee | — |
| Minimum top-up | — |
What passed and what did not
Merchant by merchant, in the order we charged them. The rates below count renewals as well as first charges.
Merchant by merchant
| Merchant | Attempts | Cleared | Rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Premium | 47 | 43 | 91% | first charge and renewal four weeks later both cleared |
| Netflix | 38 | 33 | 87% | cleared on the first attempt, no challenge issued |
| Disney+ | 29 | 24 | 83% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| PlayStation Network | 19 | 0 | 0% | Geo mismatch. The connection country did not match the card's country of issue. |
| Tidal | 14 | 5 | 36% | Geo mismatch. The connection country did not match the card's country of issue. |
Run from a Ireland-region account between 11 Jul to 22 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
Failures were rare but real: PlayStation Network declined on three attempts, and we never did get it through.
What to change before you retry
- PlayStation Network: 0 of 19 cleared. Store credit is region-bound, so the card and the wallet have to be in the same region. Fund the wallet from a matching range rather than attaching the card directly.
- Tidal: 5 of 14 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.
Setup notes for FCMB Virtual Card
- 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.
- 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.
- Set the billing address to exactly what FCMB Virtual Card generates for Ireland. Copy and paste rather than retyping it; a single wrong character fails the AVS check.
Verdict, briefly
Nothing here is a dealbreaker, but nothing is a standout either. It does the job on Ireland-region checkouts. If your only requirement is that the payment goes through, this range meets it.
The things people actually ask
What does the 520179 BIN tell a merchant?
It tells the risk engine three things before your bank is ever contacted: issuer FCMB Virtual Card, country of issue Ireland, product class Credit. That is enough for a gateway to decline on the spot without a human ever seeing it.
Is 520179 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 520179 be declined if the range is fine?
Of the 147 attempts behind this page, the losses broke down as address mismatch first, incomplete 3-D Secure second, and merchant-side range blocks a distant third. Only the last one is about 520179.
Can thousands of people share the same BIN?
That is the normal case. Every Credit card FCMB Virtual Card issues in Ireland carries the same six digits. Two people on 520179 can get opposite results at the same checkout, which is why a single review is never conclusive.
How this test was run
We bought a FCMB Virtual Card card, funded it, and pushed 147 charges through live merchant checkout pages between 11 Jul to 22 Aug 2026. Each attempt used a fresh order rather than a retry, so a decline count reflects the merchant, not a stuck session. 105 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 28 August 2026 · 147 charges on record for this range.