Pursuant to the above discussion something new occurred to me:
Everyone is aware of merchant category code (MCC) use by card issuers granting rewards, or not, according to what you buy. Right now, for example, Chase is granting a 5% reward for any purchase with their Freedom card which is tagged with a grocery MCC. All CC purchases are tagged, at point of sale, with an MCC.
So I was wondering if possibly reward CC issuers, e.g. Alliant, might also be leaning on MCC data to assist them in detection of unwanted (by them) card use. I did some sleuthing on the net and discovered the following:
Was not able to confirm MCC use this way here in America. But in foreign countries various entities classify and categorize certain MCCs in ways which would confer upon those MCCs concern and suspicion. I even found, in Australia, an entity which applied the term “quasi cash” to certain MCCs. That cannot be good.
Anyway, my inability to find American examples of MCCs being used to assist issuers with detection of unwanted card use surely is no guarantee it’s not happening. At the least, for example, the MCC together with the size of the transaction could help Alliant detect and filter out certain transactions for closer examination.
All of that said, I quite naturally thereafter sought to learn the MCC which had been assigned to various past purchases on my Alliant Visa Signature card. This was unsuccessful. I could not find anywhere in the individual Alliant purchase records the MCCs of my various purchases. Was left to do my best, which was:
Using the Alliant yearly summary for my 2017 CC purchases, I noted names of the various categories listed there appeared to track MCC descriptions with great accuracy. Working backwards I was able to come up with putative MCC code numbers. I then sought to determine whether any of those MCC codes were suspicion raisers where AA is concerned.
CrushinAOR posted up thread that Alliant “definitely does not like business spend on the personal card”. I asked “How do they know”. I’m now thinking MCC analysis assists them in detection of such business spending, and likely in detection of other spending patterns which can lead to AA.