You bought something on Amazon. Your bank statement shows AMZN MKTP US*1A2B3C. You signed up for SHEIN, and your statement shows ROADGET BUSINESS PTE. LTD. You upgraded Google Drive storage — and the statement reads GOOGLE*GSTORAGE.
None of these descriptions were designed with you in mind. They exist to satisfy a payments infrastructure that was built in the 1970s and has barely changed. Here's what's actually going on.
The merchant name field has a 25-character limit
When a card payment is processed, the Visa and Mastercard networks send transaction data from the merchant's bank to your bank. That data includes a field called the merchant name — but it's capped at 25 characters.
25 characters. That's less than this sentence.
Companies with long names have to abbreviate. Amazon becomes AMZN. Marketplace becomes MKTP. A transaction reference gets appended, eating the remaining space. The result: AMZN MKTP US*1A2B3C4D.
This limit comes from ISO 8583, the international standard for financial transaction messages, which was designed in 1987 and is still the backbone of card payments worldwide. More modern payment networks support longer descriptions, but the legacy infrastructure means truncated names are still the norm.
Charges appear under the legal entity, not the brand
The name that appears on your statement is the merchant name registered with the card network — which is the legal entity processing the payment, not necessarily the brand you recognise.
This is why:
- SHEIN appears as ROADGET BUSINESS — Roadget Business Pte. Ltd. is SHEIN's Singapore-registered parent company
- Just Eat appears as JUST-EAT.CO.UK or as the restaurant's own name if you paid the restaurant directly
- Tinder appears as MATCH GROUP or MTCH GROUP — Tinder is owned by Match Group
- Disney+ can appear as DISNEY PLUS, DISNEY*PLUS, or under various regional Disney entity names
Large corporations often have multiple subsidiaries, each with their own merchant registration. Apple alone has dozens of billing entities across different countries — hence why you sometimes see APPLE.COM/BILL, ITUNES, APPLE*MUSIC, or APPLE*TV all as separate line items.
Payment processors add their own layer
Some companies don't process card payments themselves — they use a third-party payment processor that shows up in the transaction instead of (or alongside) the merchant name.
Common examples:
- CRV* prefix — used by Creditcall, a payment processor used by several subscription services including OnlyFans
- PAYPAL* prefix — when you pay via PayPal, the statement shows PAYPAL* followed by the merchant name (but the merchant name may still be truncated)
- SP* prefix — Stripe, the payments company, sometimes uses this prefix for its merchants
- SQ* prefix — Square, the payment processor popular with small businesses and market traders
This layering is why you might see CRV*ONLYFANS.COM rather than just ONLYFANS — there's an intermediary involved in processing the payment.
Location codes get appended
Visa and Mastercard also send a merchant city field with every transaction. Your bank often appends this to the merchant name, which can make descriptions like:
- NETFLIX.COM LOS GATOS CA
- SPOTIFY AB STOCKHOLM
- GOOGLE*GSTORAGE MOUNTAIN VIEW
The city refers to the company's registered billing address, not where you made the purchase. That's why your Spotify charge shows Stockholm (Spotify's headquarters) even though you're in Manchester.
Why don't banks just fix this?
Some are trying. Several UK banks (Monzo, Starling, Revolut) now use merchant lookup databases to display recognisable logos and cleaned-up names alongside the raw transaction data. When you pay Spotify in Monzo, you see the Spotify logo and "Spotify" — even though the underlying transaction data still says SPOTIFY AB STOCKHOLM.
But this only works when the bank has the merchant in their database. New merchants, smaller businesses, and companies that recently changed names often still show the raw cryptic description.
Traditional banks (Barclays, HSBC, NatWest) are slower to adopt this enrichment — their statements often still show raw transaction data as it came from the network.
The reference codes at the end
Many descriptions end with an asterisk followed by a string of numbers and letters: AMZN MKTP US*1X2Y3Z. This is typically an order reference or transaction ID appended by the merchant. It's unique to your specific transaction and can help the merchant look it up if you contact them.
The asterisk (*) itself is commonly used as a separator between the merchant name and the reference code — it has no special meaning beyond being a convenient separator character that doesn't require its own character space.