MCCs are used to classify businesses by the type of goods or services they provide. For example, grocery stores, hotels, and airlines all have different MCCs. These codes are often used for calculating interchange fees, authorizing payments, and preventing fraud, so it’s important that your connected accounts have MCCs that match their businesses.

Stripe automatically sets MCC codes for connected accounts, but you can choose to set them manually for Custom and Express accounts.

Setting MCCs automatically

Stripe automatically evaluates accounts to determine appropriate MCCs. This means you don’t need to build and maintain any custom logic. Generally, the industry listed in the Stripe Dashboard for the connected account is used to determine the MCC. This value is set during the OAuth flows for Standard and Express accounts, and manually for Custom accounts. Express accounts can also set the MCC manually.

If the industry can’t be used, Stripe might use information from the connected account’s website to determine the MCC. If this also fails, the platform or Stripe’s default MCC (5734 Computer Software Stores) is used.

Sometimes accounts are flagged for manual review by Stripe. If this happens and Stripe determines the MCC on an account is inaccurate, we might update it. The new MCC can’t be manually changed by the platform, and an error is returned if the API is used to update the MCC.

Setting MCCs manually

If you support Custom or Express accounts, you can specify MCCs manually when you create accounts. If your connected accounts share the same MCC, you don’t need to add a new UI element to collect this information. You can just set the code using business_profile[mcc] when you create accounts. The examples below use the code for Computer Software Stores (5734), but you can see a full list in the next section.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts \
  -u sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
  -d country=US \
  -d type=custom \
  -d "requested_capabilities[]"=card_payments \
  -d "business_profile[mcc]"=5734

# Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

account = Stripe::Account.create({
    country: 'US',
    type: 'custom',
    requested_capabilities: ['card_payments'],
    business_profile: {mcc: '5734'},
})

# Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

account = stripe.Account.create(
    country='US',
    type='custom',
    requested_capabilities=['card_payments'],
    business_profile={'mcc': '5734'}
)

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
\Stripe\Stripe::setApiKey('sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc');

$account = \Stripe\Account::create([
    'country' => 'US',
    'type' => 'custom',
    'requested_capabilities' => ['card_payments'],
    'business_profile' => ['mcc' => '5734'],
]);

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
Stripe.apiKey = "sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc";

Map<String, Object> params = new HashMap<>();
params.put("country", "US");
params.put("type", "custom");
params.put("requested_capabilities", Arrays.asList("card_payments"));
Map business_profile = new HashMap();
business_profile.put("mcc", 5734);
params.put("business_profile", business_profile);
Account account = Account.create(params);

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
const stripe = require('stripe')('sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc');

const account =  stripe.accounts.create({
  country: 'US',
  type: 'custom',
  requested_capabilities: ['card_payments'],
  business_profile: {mcc: '5734'},
);

If your connected accounts have different MCCs, you might want to provide a short list of options for new users to choose from. Then, based on the user’s selection, you can pass an MCC appopriate for their business. If you don’t want to pass MCCs when you create accounts, you can also update accounts with MCCs later.

Similar to an MCC that’s set automatically, Stripe can override an MCC set manually if the connected account is flagged for review and we determine the MCC is inaccurate.

Merchant category code list

Below is the list of supported MCCs you can use when creating Custom or Express accounts.