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Card Payments - Statement Descriptor

A Statement Descriptor is an additional element added to the trade name, making a specific transaction more recognizable and easier to identify and retrieve.

⚠️ Pilot feature
Statement Descriptors are currently in the pilot phase. This feature cannot yet be activated directly through the Merchant Dashboard.

Would you like to participate in the pilot and enable Statement Descriptors? Please contact support@pay.nl.

A Statement Descriptor works by adding an extra, recognizable description to the card transaction, appended after the trade name. This addition can, for example, contain a order, reservation, or reference number. This makes it easier for the merchant to use the descriptor to determine which specific transaction a payment belongs to. 

Change "Your Company Name" on the statement to: Your Company Name* A64SKF2

Allowed Characters

Only alphanumeric characters are allowed (A-Z, a-z, 0-9). Spaces and special characters are not allowed.

Advice
We recommend using only uppercase letters, so that the description is displayed as consistently as possible across different banks and card networks.

For example:

✅ MYCORP123
❌ My Corp 123 — contains spaces
❌ MY-CORP — contains a hyphen
❌ MYCORP#123 — contains a special character

Use only alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) and - Spaces and special characters are not allowed. The use of uppercase letters is recommended.

Card Payments - Statement Descriptor

Activate

The Statement Descriptor can be activated via the Merchant Dashboard. Once activated, an additional description can be added to the trade name for card payments, making individual transactions easier to recognize and trace. 

From order.reference to the Statement Descriptor

When the statement descriptor is based on the payment reference, PAY combines the merchant's tradename and the payment reference into one descriptor.

The maximum descriptor length used by PAY is 22 characters.

Format

{tradename}* {reference}

The separator * uses 2 characters.

Rules

  1. If the complete tradename + separator + reference fits within 22 characters, we show both in full.
  2. If the combined value exceeds 22 characters, we first shorten the reference, keeping the last characters of the reference.
  3. We always show at least the last 6 characters of the reference when reference-based statement descriptors are enabled.
  4. If keeping 6 characters of the reference still does not fit, we shorten the tradename.
  5. Therefore, the maximum tradename length is 14 characters when a reference is included: 14 + 2 + 6 = 22.
  6. If a merchant wants more of the reference to be visible, they must configure a shorter tradename.

Examples

Use case Tradename Reference Original length Result Consequence
Both fit My Corp (7) 12AB-56CD (9) 7 + 2 + 9 = 18 My Corp* 12AB-56CD None
Long reference My Corp(7) 12AB-56CD-89QZ (14) 7 + 2 + 14 = 23 My Corp* 2AB-56CD-89QZ Remove characters from the start of the reference until the descriptor fits
Long tradename My Great Corporation (20) 12AB-56CD(9) 20 + 2 + 9 = 31 My Great Corpo* B-56CD Tradename is shortened to 14 characters; only the last 6 characters of the reference are shown

In other words, when truncation is required, the priority is:

Tradename → * → last part of reference

with at least 6 reference characters preserved.

Scheme limits

Scheme Allowed Scheme maximum PAY maximum
Visa Yes 25 YEARS 22
Mastercard Yes 22 YEARS OLD 22
Amex Yes 83 bytes ANS 22
Bancontact Yes 22 YEARS OLD 22

Bancontact

For Bancontact, some banks can also display the payment description on the bank statement instead of, or in addition to, the payment reference.

Example order:

  • Reference: 12AB-56CD-89QZ
  • Description: Bike order invoice #1223423