Categories
Merchant identification is the process of finding out the name of the business where a transaction took place. Every business has a unique merchant identification number, from ‘Sainsburys’ to ‘Primark’ or even ‘Jennings Bet’.
At Moneyhub, we convert the merchant identification number to the merchant name, known as merchant detection. This information is then attached to other transaction data like payment amount and time of purchase in the banking apps that we service for ease of recognition and further analysis.
Not all categorisation and enrichment providers arrive at their merchant identifier in the same way, which means that the outcome of a brand name isn’t guaranteed. When providers can’t identify exact merchant names, it’s more difficult for customers to recognise transactions, and for financial institutions to perform further analysis.
Wait… so a merchant identification number isn’t the same as merchant identification?
The short answer: no, they’re different.
The longer explanation: a raw 15-digit string of numbers is the merchant ID number. Some banks and lenders will find this data sufficient and include it in its raw form in transaction descriptions, confusing end users and making it harder for employees to analyse. Unfortunately there’s no universal merchant identification number lookup service to bypass this obscure output, either.
However, most categorisation and enrichment systems transform this merchant number into the merchant’s trading name after a customer payment. This process of determining the merchant name from the numbers is the merchant identification (or detection) process.
share