Credit card growth based on bank identification numbers (BIN)

[kerplunk]

Is it true that credit card growth is restricted, depending on your credit card's BIN (bank identification number)?

For example, I have a Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Unlimited card. One is an original Chase Student card and the other is an old WaMu card. I can tell which is which based on their BIN. Before I moved credit limits around to increase the former WaMu card, the limit would not grow from $500 -- it's $17k now.

Going forward, I'm thinking that Chase will never give me an auto CLI for this card.

What are your thoughts?

[longtimelurker]

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@kerplunk wrote:

Is it true that credit card growth is restricted, depending on your credit card's BIN (bank identification number)?

For example, I have a Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Unlimited card. One is an original Chase Student card and the other is an old WaMu card. I can tell which is which based on their BIN. Before I moved credit limits around to increase the former WaMu card, the limit would not grow from $500 -- it's $17k now.

Going forward, I'm thinking that Chase will never give me an auto CLI for this card.

What are your thoughts?

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Obviously an issuer can decide to limit the growth of certain types of card, Capital One "starter" cards being a common example round here.  And as such, they can use an identifier available, but I would think this would be some internal account number rather than something based on BIN, unless they really had a rule like "No ex-WAMU cards can grow"

[MrDisco99]

Banks add and merge BINs all the time.  There may be a restriction on your account, but I doubt it has anything to do with it being an old WaMu BIN.

[wasCB14]

There are a lot of potential factors, and Chase auto CLIs are already fairly uncommon here since MF members tend to seek new credit aggressively.

People complain about old Orchard Bank cards getting poor treatment from Capital One...but a search yields a few CLI reports.

As far as Chase and WaMu, it's also conceivable that Chase decided to treat $500 CL WaMu accounts differently than $10k CL WaMu accounts. I agree that it would be easier for Chase to mark a card in their internal records than to have special BIN numbers. Issuer access to, and the use of, parts of the BIN "spectrum" can and do change.