sdsearch

Because that would have required changing every single account number worldwide for either one or the other.

See, the tie-up between Diners Club and Discover networks is only a few years old. They were totally separate networks for decades before that.

So their the BIN ranges were established long before there was any connection between the two. Discover dates back to the mid 1980s, and Diners Club to the 1950s (it is often considered the very first credit card ever). Meanwhile, they weren't connected to each other until sometime earlier this decade IIRC.

reclusive46

Oh I understand why in the past, but they could have issued new cards (as the old ones expire) with the new BIN, they've had several years now.

Superorb

A little off topic, but my friend's in-laws actually founded the Diner's card, or at least that's how she explained it to me. They're from or still living in Hong Kong, but I see them a lot in Los Angeles.

mia

Diners was founded in 1950 by Frank McNamara. He died in 1957, age 40. Read more here:

https://www.dinersclub.com/about-us/history

https://www.biography.com/news/fact-...died-penniless

Superorb

Wow, she was way off. She's got some splainin to do.

TerryK

Your friend's in-laws might have founded Diners Hong Kong.@:-) Diners was, and still is in many counties, a franchised consortium of multiple independant companies. It is not like Amex where all countries are controlled by same head office.

sdsearch

Well, maybe they could've, but why would they want to? Who knows if these networks are going to stay combined forever, maybe they'll sell the Diners Club network to someone else and keep the Discover network, but they couldn't do that if they didn't keep the BINs separate.

So I don't understand what's in for them, as a company.

Plenty of customers would be upset if they found their account numbers changed (for no reason they can understand) when their card got updated to a new date. They'd have to update every account that they had set up for automatic billing. Now, maybe you don't use the Discover card much other than for the rotating categories, but there are plenty of people out there for whom Discover is about their only card, and they use it for everything, including quite possible for lots of stuff that's automatically billed.

So the only thing I would see as reasonable is if they went to a new BIN for new types of cards which are automatically upgraded to. Discover pre-IT cards got automatically update to Discover IT without account number changes. And they only have one other card, Discover IT Miles. So maybe it'd be easier for them to go to a new BIN for just Discover IT miles (not Discover IT), but what would that accomplish?

sdsearch

Perhaps she's confused about which card it was?

1. There may be another card with the word Diners (or Diner's) in it that's not Diners Club? (Please note, there's no apostrophe in Diners Club. It's Diners plural, not Diner's possessive.)

2. Diners Club per se does not issue cards. It has franchises that issue cards. Maybe they actually founded the franchise for the Diners Club card in a particular country? (Terry K already suggested this explanation above.)

3. A lot of us in the USA abbreviate Diners Club to DC. But there's some totally separate card in Japan (and maybe elsewhere in Asia?) called DC, which has nothing to do with Diners Club. (As a Diners Club USA cardholder, I freaked out when I saw a billboard for a DC credit card while in Tokyo about a decade ago.) Maybe that's what they founded?

reclusive46

True although I think maybe it would be have been better if they'd merged Diners Club into the Discover BIN range and not the other way around. Diners Club acceptance online is terrible even when Discover is accepted and a lot of US terminals don't seem to recognize a Diners card as a Discover card.

AllieKat

Have you ever had that happen since EMV migration? The chip app is the same.

jamar

Yep. Trying to use my Discover card in China usually goes one of three ways:

1. Fallback (roughly a third of the time). "Please Swipe Card". Card slip prints with an "F" next to the card number for fallback.

2. Error, no option to swipe. This varies; it's always been one of "chip error, please check chip", "UnionPay/PBOC application not found", or bizarrely, "contactless detected, please tap card" (tapping my Apple Pay will then make the terminal spit out a "not supported" error).

3. Magstripe only processing. The automatic kiosks that sell and top up Shanghai's public transit cards work like this. I never see a fallback or error, it always works after typing in 6 zeroes at the PIN prompt (even after I set a PIN for the card, which is concerning, but oh well).

I have seen the terminal properly recognize the Discover AID and process the card as it should at exactly one place in Shanghai so far, a local noodle restaurant in a suburban mall that sees practically no foreigners. Places closer to central Shanghai that see much more foreigner traffic (tourist and otherwise) are the ones with the problems. More specifically, a new terminal type I've seen, a touchscreen thing that integrates UnionPay, WeChat, and Alipay acceptance into one terminal, has never allowed fallback on my Discover.

Superorb

Anything is possible. It would be Hong Kong if anywhere. I remember her saying they sold it a while ago and have been retired for quite some time now, so franchise makes sense.

reclusive46

Only once, otherwise it's always worked. It came up with some kind of routing error.

jags86

Discover offers 6 cards:

Discover IT: 1% CB, 5% rotating categories $1500 per quarter in spend
Discover IT Miles: 1.5% CB
Discover IT Chrome: 1% CB, 2% CB on gas and dining up to $1000 per quarter in spend

Two of no interest to people here I’m sure so I didn’t bother looking up if they have rewards

Discover IT Secured
Discover IT Student
Discover IT Chrome Student

rocky_nnc

How hard it is to get authorized user for Discover?
They say SSN Mandatory, I want to add my friend who is not a US resident, is it possible?