What Is a Billing Descriptor?
A billing descriptor is the name that appears on a customer’s bank or credit card statement to identify a transaction from your store. This is how cardholders recognize who charged them.
What Is a Previous Billing Descriptor?
A previous billing descriptor refers to any descriptor your store used in the past, not the one currently active. This often applies if you have:
Rebranded your business
Updated your statement descriptor
Changed payment processors or acquiring banks
Visa may require verification of older descriptors in order to activate certain programs, such as Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR).
Important: This is not your current billing descriptor.
Why Is This Needed for RDR?
Visa uses previous billing descriptors to confirm transaction history and ensure accurate dispute matching. Without this verification, RDR cannot be activated for your store.
Where Can I Find My Previous Billing Descriptor?
Most merchants do not have this information readily available. If you don’t, the only way to obtain it is through your payment processor.
What You Need to Do:
Contact your payment processor’s support team
Open a technical support ticket
Request a record of any previous billing descriptors associated with your store
Because this information is stored at the processor level, you may need to follow up more than once to receive it.
Template to Send to Your Processor
You can use the template below when contacting your processor’s support team:
Subject: Request for Previous Billing Descriptors
Hi,
I’m looking for assistance in locating any previous billing descriptors used on my store. I’m aware of the current descriptor, but I’d appreciate your help in identifying any older descriptors that may have been used.
If this request requires technical support, please forward it to the appropriate team.
Thank you.
There are times when your processor may not be able to find a previous descriptor (very rare) for your business. In that case, please send us a screenshot of that correspondence so we can forward it to Visa for them to proceed with their verification.