When shoppers check their bank statements, they need be able to easily identify the charges they see. If shoppers don't recognize the transaction by the description associated with it, there's a high risk of chargeback.
To help your shoppers easily identify the payments made to your business, you can customize and personalize the transaction description. You can do this in your live Customer Area for most card payments and some other payment methods.
Setting a transaction description in the test Customer Area does not have the same effect as in the live environment.
The text that describes the transactions is also known as a statement descriptor, shopper statement, or billing descriptor.
Check your transaction description
To check your transaction description, you need to have one of the following roles:
- Merchant admin
- Change payment methods
To find out how you business appears on your shoppers' bank statements:
- Log in to your live Customer Area.
- Switch to the merchant account or store.
- Go to Settings > Transaction description.
Here you can see your current settings as well as customize and personalize the description for most card payments and some payment methods.
If you already customized the transaction description with our Support Team directly, saving any changes will overwrite those settings.
Customization and personalization
You can configure the transaction description at the merchant account level.
The description can be maximum 22 characters including spaces. Anything after this will not appear on your shoppers' bank statements.
Allowed characters: [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9] . , ' _ - ? + * /. Space.
The description must contain at least one of:
Default settings
By default, you can send dynamic values with each API request using the shopperStatement field. This is how you can customize the description for each of your shoppers. For example, you can add the order reference number corresponding to the payment.
If you don't send a value in the API request through the shopperStatement field, your Doing Business As (DBA) name will be used instead.
The city in the address for your merchant account is automatically included in the transaction description, so you don't need to include it in your Doing Business As name or dynamic value.
Doing Business As name
Your Doing Business As name is a fixed value you can configure in your Customer Area for each merchant account. If enabled, it always appears first in the description.
If you don't configure the DBA separately, we will use your legal trading name known to Adyen. We recommend you set your DBA name to the name by which your shoppers know your business.
Dynamic values
When enabled, you can send custom values with each API request using the shopperStatement field. If not enabled, values you send through the shopperStatement field will not appear in your shoppers' bank statements.
This is how you can customize the description for each of your shoppers. For example, you can add the order reference number corresponding to the payment.
If you only enable dynamic values but you don't send a value in the API request through the shopperStatement field, your DBA name will be used instead.
Change the transaction description
To change the transaction description, you need to have one of the following roles:
- Merchant admin
- Change payment methods
To change the transaction description:
- Log in to your live Customer Area.
- Switch to the merchant account or store.
- Go to Settings > Transaction description.
- Configure the transaction description you want.
Any changes you save are applied immediately to all the transactions processed through that merchant account from that moment onwards.
Payment methods
These are the payment methods for which you can configure the transaction description in your Customer Area.
For other payment methods, you might be able to configure the transaction description with the payment method directly.
Cards
The transaction description you configure in your Customer Area applies to card payments made through the following networks:
- Visa
- Mastercard
- Maestro
- Diners
- Discover
- Cartes Bancaires
- China Union Pay (CUP)
- JCB
- Girocard
- Eftpos
- Interac
- Pulse
- Nyce
- Star
Wallets
Your transaction description configuration will also apply if the shopper is paying using a wallet payment method that contains one of the card brands above.
For example, if a shopper pays with Apple Pay using their Visa card, the transaction description you configured in the Customer Area will be used.
Other payment methods
The transaction description you set in your Customer Area also applies to payments made using:
- Bancontact (BCMC) - both card and mobile integrations
- iDEAL