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." In some case the customer wants the name to be cryptic or misleading. They don't want to advertise the true nature of the business they visited. In other cases the transaction may be reported through another business. A few years ago the local PTA was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. A local business allowed the PTA to use their credit card reader to process transactions over a certain amount. Of course when the credit card statement arrived it looked like you spent $500 at the florist. I have seen PayPal listed when donating to some small charities.  I have noted another case where confusion can occur. I used a debit card to buy a soda from a vending machine: the name and location were the name of the vending machine company and the location of their main office. It didn't say  soda machine city A. It said Joe's vending company city B. In most cases the business and the credit card company want to make it easy to identify the transactions to keep the cost of research and charge backs to a minimum. Obviously, the credit card's administators know who this charge was submitted by. Contact them, tell them that you don't recognize the charge, and ask them to tell you who it was from. If they can't or won't, tell them you suspect fraud and want it charged back, then wait to see who contacts you to complain that the payment was cancelled. Note that you should charge back  any charge you firmly believe is an error, if attempts to resolve it with the company aren't working. Also note that if you really ghink this is fraud, you should contact your bank and ask them to issue a new card number. Standard procedures exist. Use them when appropriate.
Credit card companies organize types of businesses into different categories. (They charge different types of businesses different fees.) When a business first sets up their credit card processing merchant account, they need to specify the category.  Here is a list of categories that Visa uses. Grocery stores and supermarkets are category number 5411. Other types of businesses, such as the examples you provided in your question, have a different category number. American Express simply looks at the merchant category code for each of your transactions and only gives you rewards for the ones in the grocery store category. It's all automated. They likely don't have a list of every grocery store in the US, and even if they did, they would probably not provide it to the public, for proprietary reasons. If you are in doubt about whether or not a particular store is in the grocery category, you'll just have to charge it to your card and see what happens. Often, the category of transaction will be shown for each transaction on your credit card's website. I would like to offer a different perspective here.  The standard fee for a credit card transaction is typically on the order of 30 cents + 2.5% of the amount (the actual numbers vary, but this is the ballpark). This makes small charges frequently unprofitable for small merchants. Because of this they will often have minimum purchase requirements for credit/debit card payments. The situation changes for large retailers (think Wal-mart, Target, Safeway, Home Depot). I cannot find a citation for this right now, but large retailers are able to negotiate volume discounts from credit card companies (a guy who used to work in finance at Home Depot told me this once). Their transaction fees are MUCH lower than 30 cents + 2.5%. But you get the same reward points on your credit card/debit card regardless of where you swipe it. So my personal philosophy is: large chain - swipe away without guilt for any amount. Small merchant - use cash unless it's hundreds of dollars (and then they may give you a cash discount in that case). And make sure to carry enough cash for such situations. When I was a student, that was about $20 (enough for coffee or lunch at a small place). Intellectually and logically, it shouldn't bother me for a second to charge something for a buck.  It's a losing proposition for the merchant, but their immediate business costs should be of little concern to me.  (They're making a choice to sell that item to me at that price and by accepting that means of payment, right?)  but the more I charge as opposed to paying cash, the more cash back I get. In my old-ish age, I've gotten a little softer and will pay cash more often for smaller amounts because I understand the business costs, but it's not a matter of caring what other people think. Accepting credit cards, or not, is a business decision.  It's usually a good one.  But with that decision come the rules, which up until about a year ago, meant that merchants couldn't set a minimum charge amount.  Now that's not the case; merchant account providers can no longer demand that their merchant clients accept all charges, though they are allowed to set a minimum amount that is no lower than $10.00. In the end, it's a matter of how much you're willing to pay in order to influence people's thinking of you, because the business/financial benefits of doing one or the other are pretty clear. "Much of what you're asking will not be disclosed for obvious security reasons, so don't be surprised when call center people say they ""don't know"".  They may actually not know, but even if they did, they'd be fired if they were to say anything.  Nothing could be a touchier subject than online security for the financial institutions. I don't know of reliable sources for the data you're asking about, and I don't know the banks or other firms would release it.  For a bank to talk about its incidence rates of fraud would be unusual, because none of these institutions wants to appear ""less safe"" than their competitors.  If there's any information out there then it's going to be pretty vague.  None of these institutions wants the ""bad guys"" to know what their degree of success is against one bank versus any other.  I hope that makes sense. The smaller banks usually piggyback their data on the networks of the larger financial institutions, so they are as secure (as a general rule) as the larger banks' networks they're running on.  Also, your transactions on your credit cards are not generally handled directly by your bank anyway, unless it's one of the big heavyweights like Chase or Bank of America.  All transactions run through merchant processors, who act as intermediaries between merchants and the banks, and those guys are pretty damned good at security.  I've met some of the programmers, and they're impressive to me (I've been a programmer for 35 years and can't put a finger on these guys!). Most banks require that you must provide proof of identity when opening an account, and that ID must me the standards of the ""USA Real ID Act"".  Here's an excerpt from the Department of Homeland Security website on what Real ID is: Passed by Congress in 2005, the REAL ID Act enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.” The Act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards and prohibits Federal agencies from accepting for official purposes licenses and identification cards from states that do not meet these standards. States have made considerable progress in meeting this key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and every state has a more secure driver’s license today than before the passage of the Act. In order for banks to qualify for FDIC protection, they must comply with the Real ID standards when opening accounts. As with any business (especially online), the most effective way to minimize fraud is vigilant monitoring of data.  Banks and other online financial entities have become very adept at pattern analysis and simply knowing where and what to look for when dealing with their customers.  There are certainly sophisticated measures which are kept carefully out of the public eye for doing this, and obviously they're good at it.  They have to be, right? There's no way to completely eliminate fraud -- too much incentive exists for the ""bad guys"" to not constantly search for new ways to run their schemes, and the good guys will always be at the disadvantage, because there's no way to anticipate everything anyone might come up with.  Just look at online viruses and malware.  Your antivirus software can only deal with what it knows about, and the bad guys are always coming up with some new variant that gets past the filters until the antivirus maker learns of it and comes up with a way to deal with it. Your question's a good one to ponder, and I wouldn't want to be the chief of internet security for a bank or online institution, because I'd lay awake at night pondering when the call's going to come that we finally ran out of luck! (grin) I hope this was helpful. Good luck!" This discussion over at Google Answers suggests that the only time it matters is if your signature is challenged -- that is, someone has reason to doubt it's you authorizing your signature.  (Assuming US here.) But if you wanted to get another debit card and sign it differently, and start signing things that way from then on, you might never get challenged about it. I don't have much to add other than your signature is not required to process a charge.  Signatures are kept on file for validity in the event you dispute a charge.  Your signature isn't held in some magical database with signature recognition software.  If you draw an shark in the signature section of a receipt that won't stop the charge from processing.  In fact, many merchants don't even bother requiring the signature below a certain threshold. There are loads of behind the scenes processing improvements offered by the EMV chip; namely prevention of card number skimming and duplication via encrypted transaction signing.  While requiring a PIN adds an additional layer of security, simply processing via chip dramatically improves the network fraud prevention tools in a manner that is almost completely transparent to the user. To your point, if your wallet is lost and an imposer holds your physical card there is no anti-fraud improvement.  At any rate, you have zero fraud liability in the US. A large biller is registered and can initiate an ACH Debit to your account based on the Account Number and the Routing number. He assumes responsibility and completes the due diligence of obtaining a written mandate / permission / authorization from you. There are other legal process where by you get a Power of Attorney that would allow you to transact on behalf of someone. The key point you seem to be missing is that one can ONLY transact from ones account either by walking into the Bank / ATM, or by writing a check. There are other options as well to transact. It is not only merchants that charge for credit card purchases but also service providers. Have you looked at your phone bill lately and even your Council Rates. Most of them charge a small %, usually about 1% on Matercard and Visa, and closer to 2% on Diners, Amex and American Express cards. However, the merchants and service providers that do charge a fee for credit card use, must also provide alternative ways of paying to their customers, so that the customer has the choice to either pay or avoid paying this fee.