What it is
Issuer Country Code identifies the country of the issuer as a 3-digit ISO 3166-1 numeric code, encoded in 2 BCD bytes. Terminals compare it against the terminal country code (9F1A) to decide whether a transaction is domestic or international, which affects Application Usage Control (9F07) checks.
Where it appears
Read from the card record files; used in usage-control and risk checks.
Specification reference
Defined in: EMV 4.x Book 3 (Application Specification), Annex A — Data Element Dictionary
Example values
0840United States (840)
0156China (156)