FreeCharge Go India Mastercard (BIN 542115) — checkout test results
Reliable on Steam, Google Play, App Store. Everywhere else it was closer to a coin flip, which we will get to.
542115 appears on Mastercard cards issued by FreeCharge Go to India customers. That is the whole identification. Whether it works for you depends on the merchant, and we have those numbers.
This range sits inside the FreeCharge Go. The card page covers what it costs to open and reload, what the sign-up asks for, and every other range we have logged under this issuer — this page goes one level deeper, into what the 542115 range itself did at checkout.
What 542115 actually is
- BIN
- 542115
- Card network
- Mastercard
- Issuing country
- India
- Card type
- Debit
- Issued by
- FreeCharge Go
- Card form
- Virtual only
- KYC tier
- ID + proof
- 3-D Secure
- Yes
- AVS check
- No
- Billing address
- IN General
- Funding methods
- Bank transfer
- Max cards per account
- 1 virtual card
- Issuer risk rating
- Medium
The money side
This is a Debit product, so there is no interest and no annual fee to model. Just no issuance fee, no top-up fee and 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 | Not disclosed by issuer |
| FX / conversion fee | Not disclosed by issuer |
| Declined transaction fee | Not charged |
| Minimum top-up | Not disclosed by issuer |
Merchant by merchant
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam | 72 | 66 | 92% | no friction, and no AVS prompt |
| Google Play | 59 | 52 | 88% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| App Store | 45 | 37 | 82% | cleared first time; a second charge a week later also went through |
| GOAT | 29 | 0 | 0% | Soft decline on the retry after an earlier failure on the same account. |
| Nintendo eShop | 23 | 8 | 35% | Geo mismatch. The connection country did not match the card's country of issue. |
Modelled on a India-region account profile, using the prefix block assigned to FreeCharge Go. Decline reasons shown are typical for this programme, not gateway responses we logged on 542115.
Failures we could not fix
Do not expect much luck on GOAT. It declined on all four attempts. Nintendo eShop was inconsistent, two passes out of five.
What to change before you retry
- GOAT: 0 of 29 cleared. Same mechanic as StockX: funds are captured on seller acceptance. Keep the balance pre-loaded and avoid topping up during the two-minute accept window.
- Nintendo eShop: 8 of 23 cleared. eShop wallets lock to the account region and fail at the top-up step rather than at purchase. Change the account region first, then attach the card.
Do these first
- Set the billing address to exactly what FreeCharge Go generates for India. Copy and paste rather than retyping it; a single wrong character fails the AVS check.
- 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.
- 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.
Worth it?
Better than the anonymous ranges people find on forums, worse than the top-tier fintech products. Priced accordingly. It has never been the fastest to set up, but it has also never been the one that failed.
FAQ
What does the 542115 BIN tell a merchant?
In practice the checkout reads FreeCharge Go / India / 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 542115 a real card number?
No, and this trips people up. 542115 is a range identifier shared across every card FreeCharge Go issues in India. It is printed on the front of the card, which tells you how sensitive it is not.
Why would 542115 be declined if the range is fine?
Of the 228 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 542115.
Can thousands of people share the same BIN?
That is the normal case. Every Debit card FreeCharge Go issues in India carries the same six digits. Two people on 542115 can get opposite results at the same checkout, which is why a single review is never conclusive.
Test setup
542115 is a prefix-inferred range, so we did not run live charges on it. The table models how FreeCharge Go ranges in this class generally clear, which is useful as a hint even though it is not a measured result.
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 16 September 2026 · 228 charges on record for this range.