Overview

Parrot by Pagos is an API-driven microservice that provides detailed bank and market data for the payment cards your customers transact with. Using a simple HTTPS request, you can submit a 6-10 digit bank identifier number (BIN)—also known as an Issuer Identification number (IIN)—for a customer's card to the Parrot application programming interface (API). Parrot will then return information about the card type and brand, the bank that issued it, and details of the market it was issued in, such as currency, country, and time zone. At an additional cost, you can request enhanced data for a BIN.

BIN data can help you better understand both your customers and their preferred payment cards. With this added context, you can design and implement a payments strategy that benefits your bottom line and improves the checkout experience for your customers. For examples of how to get started, check out our integration guides.

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Parrot doesn't have a test environment. Instead, we offer a free trial for Parrot, which allows you to test out the service and the data it provides.

Sign Up

Create a free trial account to get started with Parrot. With your free account, you can query our service up to 500 times over 30 days.

To learn more about how BINs work, check out our BIN / IIN Data guide.

Generate an API Key

After you create an account, open the Parrot Service Panel to generate an API Key:

1. Click API Keys in the navigation bar.
2. Click Create API key to add a new key to your account.

You'll provide this API key in the x-api-key header when you make your first BIN request to Parrot. Parrot uses this value alone to authenticate your request to our servers; you don't need to provide a password. For more information on how the Pagos platform uses API keys, see our API Keys guide.

Look Up a BIN

You're now ready to query for a BIN! We recommend using cURL on the command line to submit API requests to Parrot, but you can also use API query tools like Postman. Here’s a cURL example for details on BIN 55630400

curl -H "x-api-key:[your API key here]" "https://parrot.prod.pagosapi.com/bins?bin=55630400"

This will return the details for the BIN:

{
    "card": {
        "number": {
            "length": 16
        },
        "bin_min": "5563040000000000000",
        "bin_max": "5563049999999999999",
        "card_brand": "MASTERCARD",
        "type": "Credit",
        "prepaid": false,
        "product": {
            "product_id": "MCF",
            "product_name": "MasterCard Corporate Fleet Card"
        },
        "bank": {
            "name": "CITIBANK N.A."
        },
        "country": {
            "alpha2": "US",
            "numeric": "840",
            "name": "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"
        },
        "correlation_id": "eyJGaWxlSWQiOjI3NiwiVmVyc2lvbiI6NX0=”
    }
}

Card Product ID and Name

When available, we will provide the details around the card product ID and the card product name – this will denote the type of card typically present on the BIN. More details are available in the BIN / IIN Product Code Guide.

Brands Covered

At this time, Parrot covers BIN data for the following card brands.

• PayPal
• Discover
• Prop
• JCB
• Mastercard
• Visa
• Amex
• Elo
• Dankort
• Diners Club
• Unionpay
• EFTPOS Australia
• RuPay
• Accel
• NYCE
• STAR
• PULSE
• Korean Local
• MIR
• Culiance
• Bancontact
• Carte Bancaire
• Hipercard
• ATM Card
• UATP
• Cirrus
• Private Label
• Maestro

Enhanced Data

In both Parrot and Parrot Batch, you can request enhanced data. This provides you with up to 35 additional fields beyond the standard data fields of Parrot. It includes additional card brand information, estimated interchange costs, SCA regulation requirements, and more. See the Parrot Data Dictionary for a detailed list of the enhanced data fields available and an example of how BIN data appears in a query response.