Credit Card Type

Credit Card Type provides a useful utility method for determining a credit card type from both fully qualified and partial numbers. This is not a validation library but rather a smaller component to help you build your own validation or UI library.

This library is designed for type-as-you-go detection (supports partial numbers) and is written in CommonJS so you can use it in Node, io.js, and the browser.

Download

To install via npm:

npm install credit-card-type

To install via Bower:

bower install credit-card-type

Example

var creditCardType = require('credit-card-type');

var visaCards = creditCardType('4111');
console.log(visaCards[0].type);  // 'visa'

var ambiguousCards = creditCardType('6');
console.log(ambiguousCards.length);       // 3
console.log(ambiguousCards[0].niceType);  // 'Discover'
console.log(ambiguousCards[1].niceType);  // 'UnionPay'
console.log(ambiguousCards[2].niceType);  // 'Maestro'

API

creditCardType(number: String)

creditCardType will return an array of objects, each with the following data:

Key	Type	Description
niceType	String	A pretty printed representation of the card brand. - Visa - MasterCard - American Express - Diners Club - Discover - JCB - UnionPay - Maestro
type	String	A code-friendly presentation of the card brand (useful to class names in CSS). Please refer to Card Type "Constants" below for the list of possible values. - visa - master-card - american-express - diners-club - discover - jcb - unionpay - maestro
pattern	RegExp	The regular expression used to determine the card type.
gaps	Array	The expected indeces of gaps in a string representation of the card number. For example, in a Visa card, 4111 1111 1111 1111, there are expected spaces in the 4th, 8th, and 12th positions. This is useful in setting your own formatting rules.
lengths	Array	The expected lengths of the card number as an array of strings (excluding spaces and / characters).
code	Object	The information regarding the security code for the determined card. Learn more about the code object below.

If no card types are found, this returns an empty array.

creditCardType.getTypeInfo(type: String)

getTypeInfo will return a singular object (with the same structure as creditCardType) corresponding with the specified type, or undefined if the specified type is invalid/unknown.

Card Type "Constants"

Named variables are provided for each of the supported card types:

• VISA
• MASTERCARD
• AMERICAN_EXPRESS
• DINERS_CLUB
• DISCOVER
• JCB
• UNIONPAY
• MAESTRO

code

Card brands provide different nomenclature for their security codes as well as varying lengths.

Brand	Name	Size
Visa	CVV	3
MasterCard	CVC	3
American Express	CID	4
Diners Club	CVV	3
Discover	CID	3
JCB	CVV	3
UnionPay	CVN	3
Maestro	CVC	3

A full response for a Visa card will look like this:

{
  niceType: 'Visa',
  type: 'visa',
  pattern: '^4[0-9][\\s\\d]*$',
  gaps: [ 4, 8, 12 ],
  lengths: [16],
  code: { name: 'CVV', size: 3 }
}

Advanced Usage

CommonJS:

var creditCardType = require('credit-card-type');
var getTypeInfo = require('credit-card-type').getTypeInfo;
var CardType = require('credit-card-type').types;

ES6:

import creditCardType, { getTypeInfo, types as CardType } from 'credit-card-type';

Filtering

creditCardType(cardNumber).filter(function(card) {
  return card.type == CardType.MASTERCARD || card.type == CardType.VISA;
});

Pretty Card Numbers

function prettyCardNumber(cardNumber, cardType) {
  var card = getTypeInfo(cardType);

  if (card) {
    var offsets = [0].concat(card.gaps).concat([cardNumber.length]);
    var components = [];

    for (var i = 0; offsets[i] < cardNumber.length; i++) {
      var start = offsets[i];
      var end = Math.min(offsets[i + 1], cardNumber.length);
      components.push(cardNumber.substring(start, end));
    }

    return components.join(' ');
  }

  return cardNumber;
}

prettyCardNumber('xxxxxxxxxx343', CardType.AMERICAN_EXPRESS); // 'xxxx xxxxxx 343'

Development

We use nvm for managing our node versions, but you do not have to. Replace any nvm references with the tool of your choice below.

nvm install
npm install

All testing dependencies will be installed upon npm install and the test suite executed with npm test.