How much does a BIN sponsor cost?

The short honest answer

BIN sponsorship is priced deal by deal — we checked every verified sponsor's site at source, and zero of 21 publish pricing. What you can know in advance is the structure of the quote and the facts that drive it, both of which this catalogue verifies per provider: schemes, reach, passporting, settlement currencies and card products sit on every BIN sponsor profile.

What a BIN sponsorship quote is made of

1. Setup / onboarding fee — the sponsor's due diligence on your business plus scheme registration of the programme; scales with programme complexity.
2. BIN fees — a dedicated BIN (your own range) costs materially more than riding a shared BIN, but gives portability and cleaner branding.
3. Monthly minimum / programme management — the floor; expect it to step down as volumes prove out.
4. Per-card fees — issuance (physical vs virtual differ sharply; metal is its own world) plus monthly active-card fees.
5. Per-transaction / authorisation fees — each authorisation, clearing and settlement event.
6. Scheme passthrough — Visa/Mastercard fees and assessments passed through; ask for them itemised, not blended into a single rate.
7. Collateral / settlement prefunding — the hidden line: sponsors typically require prefunded settlement or collateral sized to your daily volumes. It is not a fee, but it is your cash, parked.
8. Extras that surface late — 3DS, tokenisation (Apple Pay / Google Pay provisioning), chargeback handling, card design changes, BIN country variations.

What moves the quote up or down

• Card product — prepaid and debit are the EMI standard; real credit requires a banking licence, and only 3 verified sponsors are credit-capable (Solaris, Enfuce, IT Card). If you need credit, your shortlist just wrote itself.
• Reach — issuing across the EEA needs a sponsor with a full passport; UK-only sponsors lost theirs post-Brexit. The catalogue's BIN reach and passporting fields make this a filter, not a discovery.
• Settlement currencies — EUR-only programmes are simpler than multi-currency; each provider's verified currency list is on its profile.
• Scheme choice — in practice Visa or Mastercard; if a European scheme matters to you, read the honest map first (exactly one sponsor documents one).
• Volumes and their credibility — as everywhere in infrastructure, staged and evidenced beats optimistic and round.

The adjacent costs you can price today

Parts of a card programme's cost stack are published: KYC per verification, spend-management seats, gateway rates. The complete table of published entry prices lives in the BaaS pricing guide — use it to budget the transparent layers while you negotiate the sponsored ones.

Before you ask for a quote

Bring: card product and form factors, markets, monthly card and transaction volumes (staged), licence status (BYOL vs the sponsor's licence), and whether you need X-Pays or an issuer wallet with iOS NFC. The full path from brief to signed agreement is in how to get a BIN sponsor — or let us shortlist three verified sponsors for you, free and neutral.