> Cardholders are supposed to call the merchant first
I think you're missing the point. The entire point is you don't know whom the merchant is when see SQ *SMTHNSMTHN.
I literally had that exact problem myself before. [1] I called every entity that I could possibly imagine calling, including my card issuer itself, to try to figure out whom the merchant was. Nobody could tell me. I therefore disputed a charge. Only after I incurred another instance of the same charge did I figure out what merchant was generating that name. I had to call my issuer and let them know to cancel the dispute.
I had the same experience including the SQ in your example.
Square was able to show me GPS data for where the merchant was, and I figured out it was a good truck that put an extra zero in there for a $200 lunch.
So I agree it should be much more clear and transparent.
The person you're replying to was literally talking about Square though. And it's not just a random exception. Lots of merchants use it.
Moreover phone numbers are not common. And I'm not sure what you call store IDs but the ones I recall frequently have no way to look them up. Instead of phone numbers what you frequently see is a city and state. In fact I just went to double-check one of my cards right now to make sure, and exactly 0 of the 8 transactions on it had phone numbers. (This may differ by card issuer.)
Too be honest this is actually my favourite thing about my Apple Card.
I get notifications for every transaction, notifications before the bill is due, and when you view a transaction it shows you the merchant name, location, a brand photo, Apple Maps link if applicable, and all other transactions you’ve made with that merchant.
Not really unique to Apple Card. My Amex and Chase cards also have options for notifications for all those things.
It is honestly a huge convenience. I never need to go line-by-line through my credit card statement to verify charges, because every time there's a charge, I get a push notification and, as a backup, an email.
There was just fraud on one of my cards a few weeks ago, and I knew immediately because of the push notification. Plus, Chase flagged the 2nd fraudulent charge attempt and sent me another push notification and a text message.
I think in principle, for mail-order and ecommerce, you're supposed to put a phone number in the field. For in-person transactions, you're supposed to put city and state.
The problems:
* Not everyone has it set up correctly, either inadvertently,or as an attempt to disguise questionable transactions.
* Ir's a cramped field at best, so you may end up with UNRDBL ABREVS.
* Some space gets burnt with payment aggregatoer/gacilitator IDs (the "SQ" part of the example.
A lot of this stuff is remarkably underused. There's Level 2/3 data, a very detailed interface to document individual receipt line items-- but it's typically only used for corporate cards. So even if someone bothers to configure their shopping cart to correctly populate it (often ignored, since most carts prioritize "we support 2340 different payment platforms, at a minimal level" over offering all bells and whistles, the consumer still won't see the info that would help say "oh, SQBLABLABLABLA was where I bought the blue widgets."
I think you're missing the point. The entire point is you don't know whom the merchant is when see SQ *SMTHNSMTHN.
I literally had that exact problem myself before. [1] I called every entity that I could possibly imagine calling, including my card issuer itself, to try to figure out whom the merchant was. Nobody could tell me. I therefore disputed a charge. Only after I incurred another instance of the same charge did I figure out what merchant was generating that name. I had to call my issuer and let them know to cancel the dispute.
[1] With a different processor than Square.