Statement descriptor
The short merchant name printed on a card statement. Get it wrong and your own customers report you as fraud.
See it
What it is
The statement descriptor is the short merchant text the card networks carry to the issuing bank, and it is all your customer sees in their banking app three weeks later. Most processors split it in two: a static prefix tied to your account (your brand, roughly 5 to 22 characters) and an optional dynamic suffix you set per charge with the product, plan, or order number.
Set it to the name people bought from, not your legal entity. 'ACME COFFEE' works. 'NORTHFIELD HOLDINGS LLC 4' gets disputed. If your processor allows it, append a support phone number or short URL, and show the exact string on the checkout page and receipt so buyers can match it later.
Gotcha: an unrecognized descriptor is one of the top causes of chargebacks, and a chargeback costs you the sale plus a fee even when you refund immediately. Also, the string you set is not always the string shown: character limits differ by processor, some characters (like < > \ ' " *) get stripped, and some banking apps display their own cached merchant name regardless of what you sent.
Ask AI for it
Configure statement descriptors for our Stripe integration. Set the static account descriptor to our consumer brand name in caps (max 22 characters, letters/numbers/spaces only), and set a per-charge dynamic suffix containing the plan name and short order id. Enforce the combined 22-character limit in code, strip disallowed characters (< > \ ' " *), fall back to the brand-only descriptor if the suffix would overflow, and render the exact final descriptor string on the checkout confirmation screen and in the receipt email as 'This will appear on your statement as: ...'.