WhoBilled.me maintains a purpose-built database of credit-card and bank-statement billing descriptors. Unlike general business directories, it maps the exact text that appears on a consumer's statement — strings like BKG*HOTEL AT BOOKING.C or PMP*FLDMNFIRELANDSCDJR — to the merchant responsible for the charge, together with the merchant's website, phone number, address, and merchant category.
The billing descriptor is a 22-character field designed in the 1970s. It was never meant to communicate with consumers, and industry research consistently finds that a majority of payment disputes begin with a cardholder simply not recognizing a charge. Answering "what is this charge?" requires matching the exact, often cryptic statement text — something general search and business directories are not built to do.
Records enter the database from several source classes, each labeled on the record itself: payment-industry data (acquirer and processor descriptor feeds, merchant category codes, aggregator relationships); issuer dispute data (descriptor strings that card issuers field the most "what is this charge?" calls about); merchant self-reporting (businesses that claim and maintain their own records through Descriptors.com); and public-source identification (records assembled from public business information, always labeled "AI-identified — not yet merchant-verified" until confirmed).
Every record distinguishes three separate questions. Identified means we know which merchant the descriptor belongs to. Claimed means that merchant actively manages the record. Verified means the merchant has confirmed the details. A record can be confidently identified without being claimed — and the page will say exactly which is the case. The full evidence model is documented in How WhoBilled.me Identifies Charges.
Every record carries a visible "last updated" date, and content changes are pushed to search engines the same day. Corrections are applied at the data source: when a descriptor is found to be mis-attributed, the record is repointed, the correction is marked verified so it cannot regress, and the page updates immediately. Spotted an error? Use the feedback controls on any charge page, or start a correction from the record itself.
Merchants can claim their records free of charge to keep their contact details and descriptor variants accurate. Acquirers, ISOs, and card issuers interested in descriptor data services can learn more at Descriptors.com.