Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Is there a rule that a merchant must identify themself when making a charge
Here's an excerpt from VISA's Card Acceptance Guidelines for Visa Merchants (PDF)  The merchant name is the single most important factor in cardholder   recognition of transactions. Therefore, it is critical that the   merchant name, while reflecting the merchant’s “Doing Business As”   (DBA) name, also be clearly identifiable to the cardholder. This can   minimize copy requests resulting from unrecognizable merchant   descriptors. Merchant applications typically list the merchant name as the merchant   DBA. This may differ from the legal name (which can represent the   corporate owner or parent company), and may differ from the owner’s   name which, for sole proprietorships, may reflect the business owner. I think that the key statement above is "Therefore, it is critical that the merchant name [...] be clearly identifiable to the cardholder." Since this merchant was not clearly identifiable to the cardholder, they are in breach of a critical point in these guidelines. This is from VISA, but I would assume that all other major credit cards would have similar guidelines for their merchants. However keep in mind that these are "guidelines", and not (necessarily) rules.