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Arabic descriptors

Arabic-script and mixed descriptors, transliterations and city names.

Card descriptors in the Gulf and North Africa mix Latin and Arabic script, abbreviations and transliterations. DescriptorAPI handles them natively; you do not need to translate or clean anything first.

شراء كارفور الرياض

Arabic script

Send the descriptor exactly as you receive it, UTF-8 encoded. Diacritics, tatweel (ـ) and Eastern Arabic digits (٠١٢…) are handled.
Arabic merchant names are matched against the Arabic names we hold for each merchant, so كارفور and CARREFOUR resolve to the same merchant.
The descriptor in the response is your input, unchanged.

Cities and countries

Airport codes, English spellings and Arabic names resolve to the same city: DXB, DUBAI and دبي all return "city": "Dubai", "country": "AE".

Country hints

If you know the card or account country, send it in country. The same short name can be a different merchant in a different country, and the hint helps us pick the right one. It is also used for location.country when the descriptor does not say.

Displaying results

Merchant names can come back in Arabic. Render them with dir="auto" (or your platform's equivalent) so mixed-direction text displays correctly.

Try it

Runs through the playground, no key needed

curl https://api.descriptorapi.com/v1/enrich \ -X POST \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $DESCRIPTORAPI_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "country": "AE", "mcc": "4121"}'

body := strings.NewReader(`{"descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "country": "AE", "mcc": "4121"}`) req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.descriptorapi.com/v1/enrich", body) req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json") req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("DESCRIPTORAPI_KEY")) resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)

const res = await fetch("https://api.descriptorapi.com/v1/enrich", { method: "POST", headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.DESCRIPTORAPI_KEY}`, "Content-Type": "application/json", }, body: JSON.stringify({"descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "country": "AE", "mcc": "4121"}), }); const data = await res.json();

import os, requests res = requests.post( "https://api.descriptorapi.com/v1/enrich", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['DESCRIPTORAPI_KEY']}"}, json={"descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "country": "AE", "mcc": "4121"}, timeout=10, ) data = res.json()

$ch = curl_init("https://api.descriptorapi.com/v1/enrich"); curl_setopt_array($ch, [ CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, CURLOPT_POST => true, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => '{"descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "country": "AE", "mcc": "4121"}', CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [ 'Authorization: Bearer ' . getenv('DESCRIPTORAPI_KEY'), 'Content-Type: application/json', ], ]); $data = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);

{ "descriptor": "POS 4521 CAREEM*RIDE DXB AE", "normalized": "CAREEM RIDE", "merchant": { "id": "mer_01M4TKG2681HHBYZWQE4FEQARK", "name": "Careem", "legal_name": null, "website": "https://www.careem.com", "logo_url": "https://cdn.descriptorapi.com/logos/careem-218be11e.png", "category": "transportation", "subcategory": "ride_hailing", "mcc": "4121" }, "location": { "city": "Dubai", "country": "AE" }, "processor": null, "is_subscription": false, "confidence": 0.97, "source": "cache", "verified": true }