What is a Merchant Category Code (MCC)?
These are used to control usage of corporate credit cards. MCCs are assigned by merchant type (e.g. one for hotels, one for office supply stores, etc.), with each merchant being assigned an MCC by the bank. Corporations can then control which MCCs their employees may use their corporate cards at, and this is enforced through the authorization system. If your event expects a large number of corporate attendees, you may experience that some corporate credit cards may have spending limits enforced for certain MCCs.
By default, Stripe sets your account's MCC to "miscellaneous". Some corporations may block this MCC which will cause charges to fail.
Setting Up A Merchant Category Code
If you have a customer ask for a MCC you'll need to do the following and work with Stripe directly to enable this on a per incident basis.
Sign-in to your Stripe dashboard.
Locate the failed payment and grab the charge id as shown below.
Contact Stripe support using this link.
You can review the list of MCC's here. You'll need to choose the most applicable MCC. For example, a trade show or conference may choose a MCC of "8299 (Educational Services)".
Sample request to Stripe support:
Hi, I have a customer asking for the MasterCard Merchant Code after they have received a failed charge. The charge id is: <charge_id_here>. Please ensure the MCC 8299 (Educational Services) is setup correctly and let me know when it's done so I can let my customer try again. Thank you.The customer will need to request that MCC 8299 be permitted on their corporate car.
Follow up with your customer to let them know that the request was submitted. When you hear back from Stripe that the MCC is set up, notify the customer so they can attempt the charge again.
Happy planning!