When we make a purchase, we often get the wrong MCC. Flipkart sometimes decides your shopping is “education.” Even trustworthy Amazon has managed to give the wrong MCC for a grocery transaction on Amazon Fresh and Amazon Now, which I personally faced with HSBC Live+ credit card.


I want to understand how MCC is actually calculated. For example:

• If my order has groceries along with some appliances which one will it choose?
• If I add groceries first and then appliances next, will appliances be selected?
• Is it based on value (for example, appliance costs more than groceries)?
• Is it based on number of items in each category?
• Or is there any other thing that you can think of?

Also, is the bank ever at fault by wrongly categorizing the MCC on their side? Has anyone faced cases where the merchant category was correct but the bank still treated it differently for rewards or cashback?

This is causing multiple customer reach-outs, and yet e-commerce companies are not fixing this. Are they purposefully doing this so that we care less about cashbacks and don’t dig into MCC details? Or am I just too early for this game thinking at MCC level?

I believe backend engineers or business folks who work on this might be able to answer, assuming anyone in that chain actually knows..

This would be really helpful for readers, including me. I’ve faced some loss with cards like HSBC Live+ and SBI Cashback where expected cashback was not given because of the MCC,

and then we get the absolute pleasure of chasing customer support of these so-called modern startups that couldn’t care less about customer problems.

Thanks a lot for any insights..

How MCC is selected for an order on e-commerce site..