Merchant Category Code (MCC) Lookup

A merchant category code is a four digit number attached to your merchant account that tells every bank in a transaction what you sell. Visa's own glossary defines it as a code designating the principal trade, profession, or line of business in which a merchant is engaged. The codes come from ISO 18245 and are shared across Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover, though each network words them slightly differently. The April 2026 edition of Visa's Merchant Data Standards Manual carries 934 of them. Roughly two thirds, 641 to be exact, are brand specific codes for individual airlines, car rental firms and hotel chains, which leaves 290 generic categories an ordinary US business can actually be assigned. Those 290 are what this tool lists.

You do not choose your own. Visa Core Rule 1.5.1.11 puts the obligation on the bank: unless otherwise required by law, an acquirer must assign to a merchant outlet the MCC that most accurately describes its business. In practice that means whoever underwrote you: your acquiring bank on a traditional merchant account, or the payment facilitator on Stripe, Square or PayPal, where the code is usually derived from an industry dropdown you filled in at signup and forgot about. Stripe documents its fallback chain openly: if it cannot determine your MCC from the industry you selected, it looks at your website, and if that fails it uses the platform's MCC or its own default, 5734, Computer Software Stores.

The same Visa rule requires more than one MCC in situations worth knowing about. A location with a fuel dispenser that also sells goods or services face to face needs two. So does a site with genuinely separate lines of business under separate merchant agreements, or one where a line of business is designated high integrity risk and the rest is not. Visa adds a fourth case that catches a lot of modern businesses: an ecommerce site that links out to a separate website qualifying for a different code needs a code for each. If you bolted a second business onto an existing merchant account rather than opening a new one, you are probably outside that rule.

Interchange is not one rate, it is a few hundred rates, and eligibility for the cheap ones is gated on your MCC. Mastercard's public US rate card for 2026 to 2027 says so in its footnotes. Merit I Insurance applies to MCCs 5960 and 6300 only. Merit I Real Estate applies to 6513 only. Merit I Day Care applies to 8351 only. The near free Payment Transaction Gaming rate applies to 7800, 7801, 7802, 7994 and 7995 and nothing else. On the debit side, the Emerging Markets education and government rate is limited to 7800, 8211, 8220, 8299, 9211, 9222, 9223, 9311, 9399 and 9402.

The gaps between those programs are not rounding errors. On a Core consumer credit card, ordinary Merit I costs 1.95% plus $0.10. The real estate version of the same program costs 1.43% plus $0.05. That is 52 basis points and a nickel, and the only thing separating them is which four digits sit in your merchant record.

Visa's debit schedule shows the same effect in a different shape. Card present on an exempt Visa check card, CPS/Supermarket is a flat $0.30 regardless of ticket size, while CPS/Retail is 0.80% plus $0.15. The two cross over at $18.75. Below that, retail pricing is cheaper. Above it, the supermarket program wins by a widening margin: on a $200 basket it is $0.30 against $1.75.

The same code drives your customers' rewards. When a card offers 3x on dining, nothing about the food decides whether a purchase qualifies. The MCC decides it. Merchants sitting in a vague code such as 5999 sometimes get complaints that a purchase did not earn the category bonus a customer expected, and there is nothing anyone at the counter can do about it.

The first cost is interchange, as above. It is invisible on a flat rate plan, because you pay the same headline rate whatever your MCC is and the processor keeps the difference. On interchange plus it lands entirely on you, which is an underrated argument for interchange plus: miscoding shows up on your statement instead of in someone else's margin.

The second is the account itself. Aggregators underwrite by category, and a mismatch between the code on file and what your website plainly sells is a review trigger. Stripe says that when its review finds an inaccurate MCC it may change the code itself, regardless of who set it originally, that it notifies the platform by webhook, and that the platform cannot change it back and gets an error if it tries. Being reclassified into a restricted category by someone else's risk team is a worse outcome than declaring the category honestly at signup.

The third is monitoring. Card networks measure dispute and fraud ratios against peer groups defined by MCC. A subscription business coded as ordinary retail gets measured against ordinary retail, where baseline dispute rates are low, so a perfectly normal subscription dispute rate can read as excessive and pull you into a chargeback monitoring program. There is a reporting angle too: box 2 of Form 1099-K is literally labeled merchant category code, so the category your processor has on file is the one that goes to the IRS, and a code that does not match how you file invites questions.

Check three places. Your monthly merchant statement usually prints it near the DBA name and merchant ID, sometimes labeled SIC rather than MCC. Your processor dashboard may expose it directly; on Stripe it is the business_profile.mcc field on the Account object, or configuration.merchant.mcc on the newer accounts API. Failing both, ask your account manager in writing, and ask them to confirm the four digits rather than describe your industry back to you.

Changing it is not something you can do yourself. Visa's manual is explicit that to request a new MCC or a change to an existing one, members must submit a completed Visa Merchant Category Code Request Form, available on Visa Access. Members means banks and other licensed participants, not merchants. Your route is your acquirer, and the request travels further if you make their job easy: name the code you believe is correct, quote the network's description of it, explain why it fits better than the current one, and attach evidence.

Expect friction in one specific case. If the change moves you into a cheaper interchange bucket and you are on flat rate pricing, your processor keeps that difference today and gains nothing from fixing it. Worth knowing before you read a slow response as ordinary bureaucracy. On interchange plus your processor is broadly indifferent, and the change usually moves faster.

Do not shop for a code that flatters you. Picking a category that does not describe your business breaches your merchant agreement, and it is exactly the behavior the networks' integrity programs exist to catch. A cheaper interchange bucket is not worth a terminated account and a listing on MATCH.

There is no single industry standard list, which is why so much of what gets published about high risk MCCs is guesswork. The closest thing to an authority is Visa's, printed in the same manual as the codes. In the April 2026 edition Visa designates as high integrity risk, for all card absent transactions: 5122, 5912, 5966, 5967, 5993, 7273 and 7995. For certain card absent transactions it adds 4816 for cyber lockers and file sharing, 6211 for financial trading platforms, 5968 for negative option subscriptions, 5816 for skilled game wagering such as daily fantasy sports, and 6051 and 6012 for crypto exchanges, wallets and on ramps.

Past that list, high risk means whatever the processor you are applying to says it means. Stripe's published restricted businesses list, last updated 13 May 2026, prohibits or restricts debt collection, bail bonds, timeshares, commercial airlines, cruises, credit repair and counseling, door to door sales, telemarketing, dating, cyberlockers, money transmission, legal firearms, tobacco and prescription pharmaceuticals, among others. The flag in the table above is set when a code appears on Visa's list, or when the business the code plainly describes is prohibited or restricted on Stripe's. That is a reasonable proxy for whether a mainstream aggregator will board you.

A flag is not a verdict. It means a flat rate aggregator will probably decline you and you will end up with a specialist acquirer, higher rates, a rolling reserve, or all three. It is worth knowing what the flag misses. Several of the most scrutinized US verticals have no code of their own. CBD, nutraceuticals and supplements get filed under 5499 or the catch all 5999, and shipped alcohol under 5921, none of which carries a flag here. That is precisely why underwriters read your website instead of trusting four digits, and why a bland code will not get a genuinely restricted business boarded.