Debit card number changed? Any reason?

ttony111

My old card had expired and I was sent a new chip and pin card. I have only just noticed that the card I was sent has the last 3 digits of the card totally different. Why would these change? All the other numbers are correct and the account number and sort code are the same too.

This is causing me a problem now as I have an online casino account that has the old card details and this now differs from my new non-expired card. The casino is now saying that it is a different account and will not change the card as I could be money-laundering

So any ideas of why the bank would change my card number. I cannot prove my old card number either because obviously I have shredded it as it had expired :mad:

jfdi

Mine changes - last 3 or 4 digits - every time I get a new one (Barclays Visa debit). Means I have to go onto Amazon, Virgin etc & change the details. Never thought of it as anything other than security. At least it's pretty infrequent!

At least the PIN doesn't change!

A

heppy23

The card number sometimes, but not always, is based on your account number. Sometimes is just a sequential number.

I learnt a bit about how card numbers work when I lost my wallet. I replaced all my card and then the new card stopped working. I went into the bank and they said the card I had was the card I reported lost.
They went on to explain that when you get a new card one digit goes up by one and one goes down by one.

Turns out my (mad) girlfriend at the time had taken my wallet and was playing strange tricks on me which involved taking my wallet and letting me report it all lost. I was glad to see the back of her.

Alfie_E

Card numbers are of the form

MIIIII ######### C

where

MIIIII identifies the issuer of the card
M indicates what sort of card it is (major industry identifier)
##…## are the digits the bank chose to use to make your card unique
C is a check digit

For some Maestro cards, the bank makes your unique #-digits the same as the bank account number that appears on your cheques. They also prefix that number with your sort code. That combined number takes up the position II##…##. It also means more digits in the #-positions, and the total length of the card number increases.

For Visa and some Maestro cards, the unique digits are not your bank account number, but they still identify your bank account. This means the bank can choose more than one set of digits to identify your bank account.

As jfdi says, it may be partly security. But, it may also be to help allow two cards to be valid at once. Debit cards normally have validity periods that overlap – there’ll be a month when both the old and the new card are valid. Credit cards normally have validity periods that do not overlap. Effectively, one of the #-position digits acts as an issue number, and is increased by one. Maestro cards that use your sort code and bank account number instead have an extra separate issue number.

The C-digit is determined arithmetically from all the other digits in the card number. It is used as a basic check to detect errors that might happen when people transcribe card numbers. As heppy23 suggests, change one other digit and the C-digit will change. The C-digit could go down by either one or two, when the issue number is increased by one. This depends on which #-digit is used to represent the issue number.

Bernard_Coleslaw

ttony111 wrote:

This is causing me a problem now as I have an online casino account that has the old card details and this now differs from my new non-expired card. The casino is now saying that it is a different account and will not change the card as I could be money-laundering

The casino people need to get with the program. It's quite normal for your PAN (Primary Account Number - the 16 digit card number) to change between card issues. Even normal re-issues can cause the PAN to change. Suggest you need to speak to someone at the casino site who actually knows what they're talking about.

BC