Does anyone have thoughts on what determines the Mastercard MCC for CardCash?
I get different MCCs and merchant descriptions on different transactions.
- Sometimes it's MCC A, merchant "CARDCASH-8002274214,NJ"
- Sometimes it's MCC A, merchant "CARDCASH.COM-BRICK,NJ"
- Sometimes it's MCC B, merchant "CARDCASH-LAKEWOOD,NJ"
Based on my tests, it appears that the MCC is not solely based on the size of the transaction, the type of gift card purchased, time of day, or the "trustworthiness" of the device/network/payment method. I was thinking that it might be based on which checkout button I used, but that doesn't seem to be it either.
All of my purchases have been egift cards, so I don't think it's based on a warehouse location or anything like that. I've never tried paying on mobile or through PayPal, so I'm not sure whether that plays a role too. All of my tests have been on 2 Mastercards (and I've come to similar conclusions based on both).
If you can tell me anything useful, I'll tell you why I'm interested. Or maybe you already know why. 
@JoeRockhead wrote:There's so many different reasons for this...
- The merchant locations are set up different as legal entities, differing merchant accounts, or business types where they can have different MCCs assigned based on how the business is registered. For example, you might have one gas station code as Service Station, but another attached to a grocery store often codes as grocery, because they share processing networks. Some convenience stores might be intentionally misclassified if they emphasize convenience type retail over fuel sales.
- Payment processors assigning an incorrect MCC, or uses a legacy code that hasn't been updated
- Using point of sale systems, or gateways that are tied to a parent company.
- Third party payment processing that assigns their own MCC
Definitely! For this reason, it may be an unsolvable problem. Even if there is a pattern, it may not be based on factors that I can observe or control.
I have my own additional guesses which may be totally off base:
- I think some merchants end up using different payment processing depending on the perceived risk of the transaction, which can be based on a lot of tricky variables;
- possibly overlapping, they may use different processing depending on region, system, transaction amount, etc
- I'm not a computer person, but they may select different processing systems depending on which ones are under the greatest load at any given time.
Regardless, I agree there is a bewildering complexity to this. If it was something like different MCCs at Walmart from self-check vs human vs online, that would be easier to debug. I've seen examples of people figuring that out.
In my case, my checkout process is nearly identical every time. Like @redpat said, it's likely impossible to figure out. On the other hand, y'all are really experienced and knowledgeable; I've lost count of how many times I thought I had an unsolvable riddle or unfixable problem and you came through with a solution.
So you can't blame a boy for trying.
@redpat wrote:
@bs1234 wrote:
@redpat wrote:
@JoeRockhead wrote:There's so many different reasons for this...
- The merchant locations are set up different as legal entities, differing merchant accounts, or business types where they can have different MCCs assigned based on how the business is registered. For example, you might have one gas station code as Service Station, but another attached to a grocery store often codes as grocery, because they share processing networks. Some convenience stores might be intentionally misclassified if they emphasize convenience type retail over fuel sales.
- Payment processors assigning an incorrect MCC, or uses a legacy code that hasn't been updated
- Using point of sale systems, or gateways that are tied to a parent company.
- Third party payment processing that assigns their own MCC
^
Above
Yep, it is what it is....Nothing you can do about it.
Well said @JoeRockhead
Isn't @TyrannicalDuncery3 talking abot one single "location" cardcash.com, which is generating different MCCs per transaction, even when using the same (purchasing) card. So, to me, still somewhat surprising!
ETA: beaten by @ptatohed
Does this really matter?
i think they want it to count as online for SYW, of course they don't gotta tell me their secrets