Payments and merchant data

Payments and merchant data describes the businesses that accept payments: who they are, what category they trade in, where they operate and which payment methods they take. Payment companies use it for risk, onboarding and sales, banks and fintechs to enrich transactions, and marketers to find merchants by category.

Typical fields

• Merchant ID, legal name and trading name
• Merchant category code (MCC)
• Address, coordinates and website
• Payment methods and terminals accepted
• Online, in-store or both
• Parent company and brand
• Descriptor strings as they appear on statements

Sources and collection

Merchant data is compiled from public business listings and websites, company registries, point-of-interest data and anonymized descriptors seen in transaction streams. Providers clean statement descriptors, match them to real businesses and assign categories. MCC codes are assigned by acquirers and can be inconsistent, so many datasets add a finer category of their own.

Delivery and pricing

Delivery is either an enrichment API that resolves a raw transaction descriptor to a clean merchant, or bulk merchant files. API pricing is usually per call or per enriched transaction with volume tiers, while bulk files are licensed annually by country.

Before you buy

• Test the match rate on a sample of your own raw descriptors.
• Check how often new merchants are added and closed ones removed.
• Ask how MCC codes are verified.
• Confirm country and language coverage.
• Check whether the licence covers use in customer-facing apps, such as showing logos.