Glossary · Payments
Merchant Category Code (MCC)
A Merchant Category Code is a four-digit number assigned by card networks that classifies what a merchant sells — e.g. 5812 for restaurants or 5411 for grocery stores.
MCCs decide which spending bonus applies. A card that earns 4× on dining only does so when the merchant codes as a restaurant (5812/5814), not when the same food is bought somewhere that codes as a grocery or wholesale club.
This is why Costco rarely earns grocery bonuses (it codes as wholesale club, 5300) and why some delivery apps surprise people — the code, not the product, drives the multiplier.
Pikt reads the MCC from the authorization request and routes against it, so the card you tap matches how the purchase actually codes.
Related terms
- Just-In-Time (JIT) Funding — Just-In-Time funding is a card-network flow where the issuer is asked, in real time during authorization, to fund a transaction — letting a router decide which underlying card pays before the charge clears.
- Category Multiplier — A category multiplier is the rate at which a card earns rewards in a given spending category — e.g. 4× points on dining or 6% back at U.S. supermarkets.
- Reward Routing — Reward routing is the practice of automatically selecting, at the moment of purchase, the credit card in your wallet that earns the most value on that specific merchant and category.