The Mastercard MATCH list is a database of businesses whose card processing was terminated by an acquirer, and acquirers check it before boarding a new merchant. MATCH stands for Mastercard Alert to Control High-risk Merchants. A listing does not close every door, but it changes who will board you and on what terms.
What is the Mastercard MATCH list, exactly?
It is Mastercard’s central record of terminated merchants, the system that holds what the industry still calls Terminated Merchant Files, or TMF. When an acquirer ends a merchant relationship for one of a defined set of reasons, that acquirer is required to add the business to MATCH. Every other acquirer running an application then sees the listing, along with the reason code attached to it, when they screen the applicant.
Two things follow from that design, and both matter more than the listing itself. The first is that MATCH is a communication tool between acquirers, not a credit bureau and not a regulator’s blacklist. The second is that the acquirer who placed the listing is the only party with the ability to remove it. Everyone else can only read it.
Who puts a business on it?
The acquirer that terminated the relationship. Not Mastercard, not the payment gateway, and not the sales office that sold the account. Under Mastercard’s published rules a processor must add a qualifying terminated merchant within one business day of the termination, or of the account becoming eligible after termination.
That one-business-day rule is why many merchants discover the listing only when the next application gets declined. The listing is usually in place before the termination letter has even been read, and nobody is obliged to tell the merchant it happened.
What information does a listing hold?
Mastercard’s published field list is more thorough than most people expect. A MATCH record can carry the business legal name and DBA, address, phone number, tax ID and website URL, plus the principal owner’s name, address, phone number and tax ID, the account open and termination dates, and the reason code.
The principal owner fields are the part that catches people out. A listing follows the person as well as the entity, so dissolving the company and forming a new one does not clear it if the same principal appears on the new application. That is covered in more detail in getting a merchant account after a MATCH listing.
What are the reason codes?
There are thirteen in use, numbered one to fourteen with no code six. In Mastercard’s own naming: 1 Account Data Compromise, 2 Common Point of Purchase, 3 Laundering, 4 Excessive Chargebacks, 5 Excessive Fraud, 7 Fraud Conviction, 8 Mastercard Questionable Merchant Audit Program, 9 Bankruptcy, Liquidation or Insolvency, 10 Violation of Standards, 11 Merchant Collusion, 12 PCI DSS Non-Compliance, 13 Illegal Transactions, and 14 Identity Theft.
The code matters enormously to how the next acquirer reads the file. Code 4, excessive chargebacks, describes a business that grew too fast or ran a product with a high dispute rate, and it is placeable. Code 3 or code 11 describes alleged criminal conduct, and it is not. The full table, with the thresholds attached to codes 4 and 5, sits on our MATCH list reference page.
How long does a listing last?
Five years from the date it was added, after which Mastercard purges it automatically. There is no application to make, no fee to pay and no form to file for the automatic purge. It simply happens.
Before the five years are up, removal is narrow. Mastercard’s rules allow the acquirer that placed the listing to remove it in only two situations: it added the business in error, or the listing is reason code 12 for PCI DSS non-compliance and the acquirer has confirmed the business is now compliant. Anyone offering to have a listing deleted outside those two paths is selling something that does not exist, which we set out plainly in how MATCH list removal actually works.
Does Mastercard check that a listing is correct?
No. Mastercard’s published position is that it does not assess the accuracy of MATCH listings. The acquirer that adds a record is responsible for whether that record is right.
This is the single most useful fact for a merchant who believes they were listed wrongly. The dispute is not with Mastercard and never will be. It is with the acquirer who placed the entry, and the argument that works is a factual one about whether the listing met the criteria for the code applied.
What does a listing actually change for you?
It changes the population of acquirers who will look at your file and the terms they offer, rather than ending your ability to take cards. Some processors will not board a MATCH-listed business at all. Stripe, for example, publishes that it generally cannot process for businesses on MATCH absent extenuating circumstances.
Others will, with a closer underwriting review, and often with a reserve while the account builds history. That is not a penalty for the listing so much as pricing for the reduced amount of clean history the acquirer has to judge you by. The mechanics of that are in how high risk pricing and reserves work, and the wider picture of a termination is in what to do when your processor drops you.
Frequently asked questions
Can I look myself up on MATCH? Not directly. MATCH is an acquirer-facing system with no consumer portal. In practice merchants learn their status through an acquirer running an application, or by asking the terminating acquirer directly whether a listing was placed and under which code.
Does a listing affect my personal credit score? No. MATCH sits inside the card payments system and is separate from consumer credit reporting. It can still affect a personal guarantee assessment during underwriting, because the underwriter is looking at the whole file.
If my acquirer removes the listing, does it disappear everywhere? Yes, once removed from MATCH the record is no longer visible to acquirers screening applications. The practical difficulty is that removal is limited to the two situations Mastercard allows.
Is there an equivalent list at Visa? Yes, the Visa Merchant Screening Service. It works on similar principles with its own codes and thresholds, and an acquirer may check both.
Sources: Mastercard Security Rules and Procedures Merchant Edition (SPME manual), and Stripe’s published documentation at docs.stripe.com/disputes/match, which reproduces Mastercard’s definitions.