Tools

Free tools for payment pros.

Utilities to verify merchant codes, check card details, and analyse payment data. More tools launching soon.

Six free payment tools built for merchants and payment ops teams. Look up an MCC before you apply, sanity-check a BIN on a suspicious authorisation, validate an IBAN in the checkout, model an interchange++ estimate against your current pricing, decode a payment response code from the acquirer, or work out how much revenue you can recover with smarter retries and routing. Each tool is instant, no sign-up, no data stored.

Which tool do you actually need?

You're applying for a merchant account

Start with the MCC checker and the pricing estimator. MCC decides which acquirers will touch you and how you're priced. The estimator lets you compare an offered rate against interchange++ so you know if the margin is fair.

You're investigating a live transaction

The BIN checker resolves the issuing bank, country and card brand from the first six digits. The payment response code decoder translates cryptic acquirer replies (05, 51, 91 and 200+ more) into what actually happened and what to retry.

You're modelling revenue uplift

The uplift calculator projects the impact of intelligent routing, retries and 3DS optimisation on your current approval rate. The IBAN validator is for finance and settlement teams reconciling SEPA payouts across the EEA.

You are reducing cost of acceptance

Pair the pricing estimator with the MCC checker. Most overpaying merchants are on a blended rate under a code that does not describe what they actually sell, and correcting both is usually worth more than switching provider.

You are recovering failed payments

Start with the response code decoder to separate hard declines from soft ones, then use the uplift calculator to size what retry timing and routing changes would return. Soft declines are recoverable revenue sitting in your existing traffic.

You are preparing for a trading peak

Check your MCC limits, model the fee impact of a volume spike, and confirm your payout details validate cleanly before the busiest fortnight of your year rather than during it.

Common questions

Do I need a Cardflo account to use the tools?

No. Every tool on this page is free, browser-based and requires no sign-up. Nothing you type is stored, logged or sent anywhere except the public BIN and IBAN databases the validators need.

How accurate are the BIN and IBAN lookups?

BIN data is refreshed from the public issuer registries and is accurate for card ranges published by Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, JCB and UnionPay. IBAN validation runs the full ISO 13616 checksum, then matches the country and bank code against SWIFT's public directory.

What if my MCC is high-risk?

The MCC checker flags codes that acquirers consider elevated risk (gambling, adult, nutraceuticals, forex, travel, firearms and more). Cardflo's acquirer network covers most of them; the pricing estimator gives an honest read on what you should expect to pay.

Can these numbers replace a formal quote?

The estimator and uplift calculator are indicative, not binding. Real pricing depends on your MCC, geography, average ticket, chargeback ratio and volume. Apply for a merchant account and we return a concrete offer inside two business days.

Are these tools suitable for a finance team rather than developers?

Yes. Every tool on this page runs in the browser with no setup, no keys and no code. The pricing estimator and uplift calculator were built for commercial and finance teams specifically, because the questions they answer, what should we be paying and what is recoverable, are usually commercial questions rather than engineering ones. The BIN checker, IBAN validator and response code decoder are equally at home in a payment operations or customer support workflow.

How often is the underlying reference data updated?

BIN ranges are refreshed weekly against the scheme registries, IBAN country formats quarterly against the official SWIFT registry, MCC descriptions whenever Visa or Mastercard publish changes, and response code mappings as acquirers revise their documentation. Interchange and scheme fee assumptions inside the estimator are reviewed each time the card networks publish a rate update, which in practice means twice a year for Europe and the UK.
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