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Many of us who play they credit card rewards game find ourselves wondering from time to time what merchant category code (MCC) a particular purchase will code as. For example, I was paying for parking at an airport recently and wondered if I should use a card that gives extra rewards for transit, or if it would count as travel.
I have started asking AI tools like ChatGPT what MCC such purchases will be. So far it has always given me a specific answer, though it usually hedges by saying essentially YMMV. I haven't yet had a chance to check the results afterwards, so I don't know how accurate it is.
From time to time, members here and in other similar forums have floated the idea of crowdsourcing a database of MCC's. I always found the idea impractical from an administrative perspective. But now it seems AI has given us essentially the same thing, without the need for anyone to consciously maintain it.
Not a trustworthy method, since the marchants may change MCC all the time.
Note that Chatgpt may make mistakes as well
Another beauty of the V1.0 Smartly card. Instead of hoping you get 5% but risking the possibility of getting 1%, get a guaranteed 4%. Oh please credit card gods, let the grandfathered stay grandfathered for the foreseeable future!
Good to know, but most of the problematic ones for me are convenience stores including Wawa and 7-Eleven. It's a dice roll whether they code as grocery or gas, and whether or not they HAVE a gas pump doesn't seem to figure into it.
My CFF is currently still in its year-long SUB that is 5% on both of them: Chase includes the "misc. market" MCC in groceries, so P2 is trying to use the CFF for that fact, and it covering the gas it ends up coding as is just lucky... so far. But when thats over almost all our cards that have both grocery and gas categories only count "supermarket" for groceries... the only other card with both specific categories that would include convenience stores is my Gemini, and that's only at 2% and gas/EV at 4%. At which point, sticking with one of the USB flat rate choices (4% and 4.5%) will be better/safer.
@xenon3030 wrote:Not a trustworthy method, since the marchants may change MCC all the time.
Note that Chatgpt may make mistakes as well
It's an exaggeration to say merchants change their MCC all the time. Certainly they can change, but my experience is that the overall rate of change is extremely slow.
Yes, ChatGPT and the others make mistakes. But the alternative method, human guessing, is far more falible. The stakes with any particular purchase are very low, so I'm willing to take my chances.
I'm not claiming it's a perfect technique. Just pointing out an option for people who might want to try it. It's the best tool for this job I have yet encountered.
@Curious_George2 Here is a list of all the MCC codes in a PDF format
The link is below
https://www.citibank.com/tts/solutions/commercial-cards/assets/docs/govt/Merchant-Category-Codes.pdf
@AndySoCal wrote:@Curious_George2 Here is a list of all the MCC codes in a PDF format
The link is below
https://www.citibank.com/tts/solutions/commercial-cards/assets/docs/govt/Merchant-Category-Codes.pdf
This doesn't answer the question that @Curious_George2 is after, which is "What MCC will I get if I use Merchant X [al location Y]"