Billing descriptors play an important role in chargeback management. Choosing good descriptors can help reduce the risk of chargebacks and save you money.
A billing descriptor describes a payment and helps the cardholder identify the transaction on his or her bank statement.
You likely created your billing descriptor when you set up your merchant account (or MID). If you don’t know what your billing descriptor is, your processor can help.
Your processor will have a “main descriptor” on file. However, a single billing descriptor typically has several different variations. Your descriptor may change based on factors such as:
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The type of transaction you process (card-present, card-not-present)
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The card brand that issued the card (Mastercard, Visa)
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The type of card used to process the transaction (debit, credit)
It’s important to know what your main descriptor is as well as any variations. You’ll need this information to manage your prevention alerts as effectively as possible.
TIP: We suggest you process a couple of test transactions with different cards issued by different brands to see how your descriptors display.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you create and manage your billing descriptors.
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Descriptors are set on a per-MID basis. We recommend that each merchant account have its own unique descriptor. This will make it easier to match an alert to the corresponding transaction in your CRM or order management system. It will also help ensure you don't receive alerts after a merchant account has been closed.
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If your legal name is different from the “doing business as” name, update your main descriptor to reflect something customers are familiar with.
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Make it easy for the customer to contact you. Include your phone number, email address, and/or website in the descriptor.
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Ask about dynamic descriptors. A dynamic descriptor will include the standard descriptor followed by transaction-specific information. For example, a descriptor would be “S&S Auto”. A dynamic descriptor would be “S&S Auto / FordTransmission”. If dynamic descriptors are used, make sure you understand how they are formatted and what the different variations would be.
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Descriptors can be anywhere from 20-25 letters, however, the length of the descriptor will depend on the issuing bank. Some issuers will truncate the descriptor so the full message won’t be displayed. This can cause confusion. Abbreviations can be used to avoid truncated descriptors and convey a more accurate message.
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