credit card anomaly (or not)

[wurm]

First of all, I check my credit card statement regularly as soon as I get them. So nothing is out of the ordinary, except...

Right down the street from us is a liquor store we frequent because of its convenience. We've been patronizing them for years. Nice folks, and their prices are fine. But one thing I noticed recently is that the name on the receipt, or on the credit card statement, or on my phone after using Apple Pay, could be any of three different names for the store, only one of which matches the name on the front of the store.

As I said, I've never seen a charge that wasn't legit. But I must admit it threw me for a loop when I saw one of the odd names on my iPhone after paying with Apple Pay. It's only because I cross-referenced the date and time of the purchase with what appears on my credit card statement that I realized it was that particular store.

I can't think of any reason for the business to use three different names, but then I'm not an astute businessman who knows all the loopholes of the ways of running a retail business. Any thoughts?

[GGD]

I see things like that occasionally and I think it's due to the owners having several businesses. I've most often seen this with gas station / convenience stores where the temporary charge will show up with something like "John Doe Enterprises", but the final charge will change to the brand name of the gas station.

[Sarcany]

Different processors for different types of transactions.

Debit cards are processed by one company. Credit card by another.

If they are debit cards that are swiped as credit cards, they're probably not processed as credit cards, but get bounced through the VISA/Mastercard network to a debit-network.

And Apple Pay can be processed by the regular CC merchant account provider, or can be shunted onto any of a half dozen different processors.

The merchant may well have registered for each type of service under a different company or DBA.

[wurm]

Interesting. Well, these were all Apple Pay purchases and processed by the only card I use with Apple Pay. The credit card statement shows two of the three names, but my iPhone shows the oddball name, which curiously is the one that doesn't show on the CC statement.