I’m going through the process of evaluating different cards for my setup and I’ve noticed essentially a complete lack of any information regarding how merchants code transactions. It usually comes up as an aside/after the fact in a discussion about a specific issuer. Usually when someone finds out it’s too late. And the merchant lookup tool on AwardWallet is pretty lackluster.
For something that seems so critical into evaluating multipliers, why is there not more information? Or something like a community-driven database? Do people just blindly operate under the assumption that everything under a “Restaurant” category will hopefully code as a restaurant?
Do people just blindly operate under the assumption that everything under a “Restaurant” category will hopefully code as a restaurant?
I mean, for that category in particular I’d say that for most people, the answer is “yes.” Most people dine at a variety of different places, and most individual dining transactions are relatively small, so it seems to me like an awful lot of work to look up individual merchants. I think I’ve lost less than a dollar on rewards from mis-categorized dining purchases, and it was all from a specific coffee shop that unbeknownst to me adjoined a gas station and coded as Gas.
The main categories I’d look up specific data points on would be things like “how is buying groceries at Walmart/Target treated,” if shopping at one particular Walmart is a large part of my monthly budget. Or whatever the heck Wells Fargo is doing with the Attune, haha. I could also see looking up how a certain card treats certain generic travel-related purchases (does parking count? Do tolls?) Anything more granular seems like too much work for little gain.
@Aldrin
I could see that angle. It does seem like though in at least a decent amount of cases it’s meaningful to investigate though. For example, I was looking at the Citi Custom Cash categories (https://www.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/unk06t/citi\_custom\_cash\_categories\_fully\_defined/) and there are some pretty interesting exclusions for restaurants like Bakeries and restaurants inside of another business. Depending on your lifestyle, I could see that making a decent dent if you’re getting coffee every day from a bakery or going to tons of stadiums/concerts with concessions. Another example I could think of is pharmacy inside of a grocery store. It seems like that doesn’t always reliably code as pharmacy, which could be another big one that would impact if overlooked.
Maybe I’m just overestimating the overall impact. But it seems like if people are at the level of splitting hairs evaluating things like redemptions and portal multipliers affecting points earn, then this should be factored in as well.
@Vin
If you’re comparing getting 1X at a bakery instead of 3X to redemption values and portal multipliers then yes, I’d say you’re likely overestimating the overall impact. The other two can be hundreds of dollars in value for one-time calculations. The thing you propose involves continuous mental effort for pennies.
I can see where you’re coming from for massive one-time purchases that you’d absolutely want to get right the first time. But for the everyday sorts of purchases that you’ve mentioned, it doesn’t register. In my experience–assuming you’re purchasing things within your home country–the vast majority of purchases ring up as expected.
Additionally, your “I could see it making a big dent” hypothetical situation seems predicated on continually going to the same establishment and paying with the same card even after knowing it codes wrong. After the first purchase, you’d presumably change your behavior: Either you’d switch to a different card or go to a different bakery.
Additionally, your “I could see it making a big dent” hypothetical situation seems predicated on continually going to the same establishment and paying with the same card even after knowing it codes wrong. After the first purchase, you’d presumably change your behavior: Either you’d switch to a different card, or go to a different bakery.
Wouldn’t this be useful info to evaluate before getting the card though? If I knew that restaurants X, Y, and Z that I frequent daily or multiple times a week aren’t going to code as I expected when evaluating the card, I’d rather know beforehand than waste a hard pull and have to switch cards after the fact.
It heavily varies on a case-by-case basis. So even if we were given the exact codes that are eligible for the multiplier for x card at y bank, it’s up to the merchant for what they come up as.
Plus, if you don’t have a card from that issuer, you can’t really test it out to see what it codes as. Then most data points from others would be mostly useless if they don’t live where you live and shop where you shop.
For what counts usually focuses on hitting credits from what I’ve seen.
In order for that topic to be helpful/more widely discussed, people would have to be listing out all the places then shop at, which some wouldn’t want to do for anonymity or embarrassment or whatever, and others would just find it tedious. Hence most posts asking for recs say I spend $500 on eating out each month, not “I order food at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Arby’s, Domino’s, my local Thai restaurant called Black Thai Formal, etc.”
@Fife
Even that wouldn’t be good enough since McDonald’s are mostly franchisees so you’d have to evaluate every McD’s in the US individually for their MCC code. And most merchants don’t know their MCC code. You can ask the staff and they’d have a blank look on their face.
I don’t think it’s that big of an issue most of the time. Always good practice to monitor how your regular transactions are coding. Cards like the Attune that pick a subset of small businesses whose MCC doesn’t otherwise matter seems like kind of a nightmare, as do some categories on the Cash+. Especially gotta keep an eye out for the usual suspects, like grocery/wholesale gas stations, Target, Walmart, Sam’s, and Costco, and do some research before choosing a card if you’re a heavy user of those places.
I think this MCC code thing is one of the secret advantages the USBAR has, as it will never miscode an everyday purchase if it’s done with mobile wallet.
do some research before choosing a card if you’re a heavy user of those places
I guess that’s where I’m coming from. How can you do research if there’s not a way to figure out the MCC without ad hoc searching on Reddit? Big chains and stores like Walmart are easy enough to find but not everything. AwardWallet is the only real attempt at a database and it has holes.
Let’s pretend there are 100 Credit Cards in existence. There are literally tens of thousands of merchants that choose their own classification. It’s largely a waste of time trying to list out every single one.
That’s why catch-all cards or cards like the USBAR eliminate this issue for some people.
So no, it’s not a driving variable on what card to get.
This is easily solved by the AwardWallet MCC lookup tool. In my experience, it is spot on even for places that are very small. In general though, most issuers are like: ‘everything you eat/drink (except at maybe a bar qua bar) codes as a restaurant/dining.’ Except Amex, which has a much narrower range of MCCs for restaurants.
@Dax
I found a lot of noise and useless info using that tool from personal experience honestly. As an example, Walmart has several duplicate results for the store itself. One just called Walmart, and two duplicate Walmart Supercenter results. Or try to look up concessions at a sports stadium.