The Secret of How Banks Generate Legitimate Credit Card Numbers

If you have come here looking for a legitimate credit card generation technique number that can solve all your financial problems, regrettably you are at a wrong place. This article would not show how to generate a credit card number. Instead, it will help you to learn how the existing card numbers are validated and what they represent.

Every card has a unique number. These are, however, not generated through a random unique number generation machine. The US follows a simple mathematical formula to do this.

Luhn Algorithm

Hans Peter Luhn, in 1954, when the world wasn’t absorbed by the credit card debt, introduced an algorithm that’s famously known as Luhn Algorithm. And this method is used by the government of America to generate credit and debit card numbers without errors. And if you don’t believe I am about to reveal the secret, pull out any card from your wallet and follow this process.

Here is an example. Take a set of four 4 digits like: 5183 4598 9852 5524

Now, start from left corner and double the first digit and every other digit in the sequence. This will result in something like this:
(10)1(16)3 (8)5(18)8 (18)8(10)2 (10)5(4)4

Now, add all the double digit number (in brackets) in the sequence.

1173 8598 9812 1544

Now, when we add all these digits they sum up to 76, which means this credit card number is not a legitimate one because every legitimate credit or debit card umber can be divisible by 10. You have a card, don’t you? Add all the digits and I am sure it would be 50 or 60 or any other number divisible by 10. So, you can take a random set of 16 digits; do this process over and over again until you get a number divisible by 10. If you are, however, able to successfully create a legitimate number, you cannot use it to shop or do anything with the number. Why? Because Luhn is very smart and he hasn’t publicly revealed the secret of how to generate the CID, CVC2, and CVV2 numbers that are on the face and rear portion of the card.

With this process you can easily create fake credit card numbers. But duplicating the other security codes is just impossible. This is because CVV2 code is created with the help of account number, expiry date of the card, the three digit unique service code, and DES keys. It is not generated with just a single piece of information. Even if you are able to get these numbers, the combination involved to generate the security code is far too complex than the above method. Hence, generating a CVV2 code becomes highly unattainable.

Though the involvement of complex procedure to establish a legitimate credit card security number is quite tough and may disappoint few users, most of us should be happy as it becomes quite impossible for hackers and fraudsters to duplicate your information.