Egg Money - Spending Category on Statement

James_H

I have recently got an Egg Money card and received my first statement today. Unlike the normal Egg card, or any other card I have, they have added a category field, with a supermarket purchase under 'Essentials' and train ticket under 'Travel and Transport'.

Does anyone know how they assign the categories? Is it part of the Mastercard system that the purchase type on each transaction gets informed to all credit card providers to help them managed their business but Egg Money decides to release some of this information to the individual? Or does Egg have a database of its own?

HGLTsuperstar

Does it really matter? No offence but when it comes to managing your accounts, that's really the last thing to be looking at.

Milarky

Don't know in answer to your question but if you look at MBNA they have a bit there called a 'Merchant Category Code' (MCC):

A Merchant Category Code offers a description of the type of Merchant/Shop/Retailer where you have used your MBNA Credit Card. For example, MCC 5411 relates to Grocery Stores or Supermarkets. Therefore, using our glossary can help you identify the types of transactions you have made.

These are all four digits. They list them all at that page. It has reams of categories. It is possible that this is a shared categorisation scheme -also used by Egg and others - but you'd have to ask them (or MBNA) about that I'm afraid.

James_H

It doesn't matter at all when managing my accounts, although it's probably the reason why Egg put it there. It was purely out of interest as to how they know more details about the transactions than most people would realise.

A quick google on MCCs shows it is an industry-wide feature and an individual retailer is assigned one of these by the card merchant.

Oldhand_2

Hi,

Yes, some of the descriptions are quite amusing, such as 'Other stuff', and 'Going out'. Ah well, it amused me.

Rgds.

The_Boss

As said above, it would be through the merchant code. This is how credit card companies can tell that you are using a credit card on a gambling site and then assess this as a cash advance rather than a card transaction.