Detailed List of Merchant Category Codes (MCC) For Visa & Mastercard (PDF)

Here’s a detailed list of Merchant Category Codes (MCC). The list spells out both Visa and Mastercard categories, and where they differ.

MCC Codes For Visa/Mastercard (pdf) | Visa (pdf) | Mastercard (pfd)

The document comes from Citibank based on how they code it in conjunction with Visa and Mastercard. My assumption is that Visa and Mastercard use the same codes for all banks. (The direct link from Citibank is here, I saved the PDF to the site for posterity.)

We’ve long known about the Visa Supplier Locator which gives this kind of MCC data; I don’t believe there has ever been publicly available information on how Mastercard codes and where they differ until now. (Note, the Visa Supplier Locator is presumably kept up to date while the info in this document is subject to change over time.)

This Citibank document was discovered by Reddit user Econ0mist, and reader KS supplied the Visa and Mastercard links. The vast majority of the MCC code are the same for Visa and Mastercard. u/Economist makes the astute observation that there are various categories within the Financial sector which only exist in Mastercard’s book and not in Visa’s.

Specifically, code 6050 “Quasi Cash–Member Financial Institution” is only used by Mastercard, and skipped by Visa. It might be that there are certain transactions that Visa codes as cash advance – and thus don’t have a credit MCC – whereas Mastercard codes them as a purchase. We’ve seen, for example, that Plastiq is able to accept Mastercard for mortgage payments and not Visa. Other things like bank funding might occasionally be dependent on this category as well, making Mastercard slightly more ideal when attempting a bank-related transaction.

I also noticed that Mastercard has an extra Gambling category over Visa – 9754 – for “Gambling-Horse, Dog Racing, State Lottery”. There are also a few things Visa has which don’t exist with Mastercard, such 9700 “Automated Referral Service” (whatever that means).