# Simple but Mighty - An Overview of the BIN Lookup API
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/blog/bin-lookup/index.md

Authors: Donal Rafferty. The beauty of an API is that a simple form of communication between two systems can unlock a world of unimagined possibilities. The business logic or data within a system designed to enhance a certain domain, such as payment services, can be used to solve problems outside its speciality. The Google Maps API is the most successful example of this, demonstrating how the data from road and imagery databases can power experiences such as calculating the cost of a taxi ride, tracking courier packages, and even researching the impact of congested city streets. Remember, most of this data existed within satellite navigation companies previously but was never openly shared. At Mastercard, we are on a journey to open up our data APIs to make them easier to access for a broader range of customers, simpler to use for all developers, and complimentary to innovative/novel use cases. The BIN Lookup API is our first example of this, a simple product with the ability to fuel mighty solutions. The API is a simple data exchange providing all of Mastercard's BIN ranges to a wide set of customers. Bank Identification Numbers (BINS) allow users to check what bank a card belongs to. In addition to this, the data contains information such as the country of issuance, the card type, and card capabilities. The core use case for this type of product is to enable better decisions in payment routing, but since we relaunched the API we are seeing how our open approach has led to some interesting usage. We see cases where the data is being used to automate the enrolment of certain business customers in programs, to provide real-time loyalty offers within checkout experiences for travel and retail, to enhance fraud and payment analytics machine learning models, and to improve checkout UI elements. For a deep overview of the product, covering more about BINs, product use cases, and the data within the API, please view the following video.