Payments, decoded
SQ *, PAYPAL *, AMZN Mktp: the prefixes in front of a merchant's name
When a payment company sits between you and the shop, its name often comes first. A field guide to the prefixes, from Square and PayPal to Paymob, Geidea and Tabby.
Written for: Everyone 3 min read Updated
A lot of card payments do not go straight from you to the shop. A payment company sits in between: a facilitator that signs up small merchants, a marketplace that takes payment for its sellers, an app store, a pay-later provider. Very often that company's name, or a short code for it, comes first on your statement, followed by an asterisk and the merchant. Here is a field guide.
Why the prefix is there
To the card network, the payment company is the merchant of record. It is the one with the card acceptance contract, so it controls the descriptor. Most of them prefix their own name so customers, and their support teams, can trace the payment. The asterisk is a convention, not a rule: it separates "who processed it" from "who you bought from". Because the whole line shares about 22 to 25 characters for the name, a long prefix leaves less room for the shop.
The prefixes you will see most
| Prefix | Who it is | What follows it |
|---|---|---|
SQ * | Square, the card reader and online store provider. | The business name, often cut short. |
PAYPAL * | PayPal. | The seller's name; often a phone number and a European country where the city would be. |
TST* | Toast, a restaurant point-of-sale system. | The restaurant. |
AMZN Mktp, AMAZON.COM* | Amazon Marketplace and Amazon itself. | Often only a reference code. The seller is in your Amazon order history, not on the line. |
APPLE.COM/BILL | Apple's App Store, iCloud and subscriptions. | Nothing: every Apple purchase and subscription looks the same. |
GOOGLE * | Google Play and Google services. | The app or service, for example "GOOGLE *YouTube". |
UBER * | Uber rides and Uber Eats. | "TRIP" or "EATS", sometimes with a help URL. |
TABBY*, TAMARA* | Pay-later providers in the Gulf. | The shop; repeated for each instalment. |
PAYMOB, GEIDEA, FAWRY | Payment providers and networks in Egypt and the region. | The shop, the app, or nothing at all, depending on the setup. |
Wallets work differently. Apple Pay and Google Pay usually do not add a prefix at all: the line shows the shop as if you had used the card. That is why a line saying "Google" is far more likely to be a Google service than a payment you made with Google Pay.
Reading a prefixed line
SQ *THE FARMERS MARKE gosq.com GB
- SQ *
- Square took the payment.
- THE FARMERS MARKE
- The stall or shop, cut off at the limit.
- gosq.com GB
- Square's website where the city would be, and the country.
Providers without a fixed prefix
Some providers, Stripe being the best known, let each business set its own descriptor, optionally with a short prefix and a variable suffix. Their lines look like ordinary merchant lines, so you will not see "STRIPE" in front of most Stripe payments. The same goes for many banks' own merchant services. The absence of a prefix tells you nothing about who processed a payment.
Three things that trip people up
- The prefix is not the merchant. Spending reports that group by the first word put every Square café into one bucket called "SQ".
- The location is often the provider's. PayPal, app stores and marketplaces print their own city or country, so the place tells you about the provider, not the purchase.
- Category codes follow the provider's setup. A facilitator assigns each merchant a category code, and it is often a generic one. A boutique and a bakery on the same facilitator can carry similar codes. See why MCCs are not categories.
Field note
Facilitators are not evenly spread. In lines from the US and UK, Square, PayPal and Toast dominate. In the Gulf, pay-later providers are everywhere. In Egypt, a few local providers and payment networks cover a large share of online and bill payments. Any merchant recognition that works in one region and not another is usually missing that region's providers.
If you are building on this
Treat the provider as its own field, not part of the name. DescriptorAPI returns the merchant and the processor separately, so a "PAYPAL *STEAMGAMES" line gives you Steam as the merchant and PayPal as the processor, and an "AMZN Mktp" line with no seller gives you Amazon Marketplace, because the seller is simply not in the line. The confidence guide covers how to show each case.