Originally Posted by
biggestbopper
Does this mean if I run a porn store I can code it as a bakery and benefit from the lower merchant fees for non-"adult" stores?
Kinda doubt it.
IMHO the banks are in charge of the coding.
The card issuer only reports on what data's sent. The merchant acquirer is to acquire and set up the merchant. Sometimes merchants are accidentally coded wrong, sometimes someone owned a retailer, closed the retail business and started a bakery yet kept the same merchant # so their merchant number may still show up as a retailer if no one changed it (and no one is incentivised to correct it, so it typically doesn’t happen).
Originally Posted by
Happy
I actually had purchases made at Target but paid at the Pharmacy Counter being coded as those categories earned extra points in the past but payment made at regular check out line at the SAME Target did not!
Each individual store typically has a unique merchant number that rolls up to a parent relationship (there can be a multitude of roll-up levels).
In this example the pharmacy has unique merchant number as does the retail checkout lines that both eventually roll up to Target parent.