You’re scrolling through your bank app, trying to remember what that $33 charge was. The line says “ESO PETROL TURDA DEP”. Was that lunch? A carsharing? Did someone clone your card? You tap. You Google it. Eventually, you give up - or worse, call customer service.
Now imagine the same charge just said: “ESSO Petrol Station”, with a familiar logo next to it - the same spot you’ve been fueling up at every month on the way to work. Mystery solved. No panic, no call center queue, no guessing.
This tiny shift - from chaotic merchant string to clear name and recognisble logo - might look small and cosmetic, but it’s a foundational change in how banks and fintechs communicate value, build trust, and keep users happy. And yet, the merchant name and the merchant logo, two important pieces of the puzzle, are still massively undervalued in the financial ecosystem. Let us explain.
What is transaction data enrichment?
Learn more with our in-depth look!
What is merchant name and logo?
We talk a lot about “customer experience” in digital banking. About AI, personalisation, smarter apps, and seamless flows. But you can’t build magic on messy data. If you don’t know who your customer paid, how much, and why - in clean terms - everything else suffers.
That’s where merchant name and logo data come in. These two seemingly basic datapoints can change how users interact with their money. Providers like Tapix offer this clarity - through transaction enrichment that helps banks and fintechs clean up the mess behind the scenes. It’s a pain, it’s complex. But it must be done.
But before we get into that, let’s talk about why the mess exists in the first place.
The Data Blind Spot Nobody Talks About
Let’s be honest, raw transaction data is kind of a disaster. Terminal IDs, cryptic merchant strings, outdated MCC codes - it all piles on. Here’s what that might look like:
- POS 672839*SQ*SWEETHOUSEFNB1
- E-311-VNS-SG FOOD 0973829201
- AMZN MKTPLACE PMTS AMZN.COM/BILLWA
At best, they’re ugly. At worst, they’re incomprehensible.
Most users don’t understand what “SQ*” means (Square POS system), or that it’s not a merchant altogether. Or that “VNS-SG FOOD” is a generic descriptor put on hundreds of food vendors across the globe. And the Amazon string? Good luck figuring out which order that was. So why does it happen?
Because transaction messages are designed for machines, not people, and are made by merchants themselves. They’re generated by point-of-sale terminals, payment gateways, and acquirers - not marketers or UX designers. The goal is to complete the payment, not make it look nice afterward.
And yet, every single user-facing banking app – whether it's a global bank, a growing neobank or a fintech – presents more of a raw mockup than a true reflection of users' transactions. That’s a problem. Users don’t want to decode transactions. They just want to know what they bought. And that’s where enriched merchant names and logos finally give the data a face.
The Merchant Name: Brand First
In banking, the “merchant name” seems simple at first glance. It’s just the business you paid, right? Not quite. There’s a world of difference between the raw merchant data point that comes through a payment network and a clean, user-facing merchant name that actually makes sense and is connected to other data points properly. Here’s what we mean:
A cleaned merchant name isn’t just easier to read - it’s easier to process. In cognitive science terms, this reduces “cognitive load.” Instead of the brain working to decode what IYZICO might stand for, the user just sees “Tesla Charger”. Instant understanding.
With providers like Tapix, you can also go deeper – from brands like Zara to store level identification with sub-brands like Zara Home, which gives users even more clarity. Plus, you get more connected data points for the same price – GPS location, Phone numbers, URL Address, you name it.
And when users don’t have to guess, they trust the product more.
The Merchant Logo: Showing is Telling
People are visual creatures. We recognise brands by sight long before we read their names. Think about how you browse your phone. Instagram icons, Google Maps pins, Netflix thumbnails - they all rely on one thing: recognisable logos.
If the merchant name is the voice of the transaction, the logo is its face. And sometimes, that face says more than words ever could.
Picture this: you’re scrolling through your transaction history, and you spot the familiar green Starbucks logo. You know what that was. You see the Uber icon? Ah, that ride home last Friday. No stress. No tapping through layers of transaction details.
Now imagine the same list with just raw text and random merchant codes. Everything takes longer. You hesitate more. And the experience feels colder, more sterile. That hesitation? It adds up. It’s what turns users off from using their bank’s native app and pushes them toward sleeker, smarter fintech alternatives. Modern neobanks like Revolut or bunq that actually show you stuff.
And the best part? Users expect this now. Gen Z grew up with icon-based UIs. They’re used to visual shortcuts. If your app doesn’t have logos, it feels like it’s from another era.
How Banks and Fintechs Use This?
Individually, merchant names and logos are powerful. Together? They’re magic. The same two data points - a clean merchant name and a logo - mean completely different things depending on who’s using them. For apps, it’s a UX superpower. For banks, it’s a fraud prevention tool. For the smartest ones? It’s both and more.
Let’s take a closer look at how different players in banking and fintech are putting this data to work in real life.
Neobanks
Challenger banks don’t have rich legacy infrastructure. What they have is user obsession - and they know that today’s users expect clarity from day one. Banks like Monzo, Revolut, and bunq have made it a core part of their product to show clear, enriched transactions. If you’ve ever used one of these apps, you’ll notice how your feed reads like a financial diary. That’s functional. These banks aren’t just listing transactions. They’re helping users understand their money.
Also, it helps them reduce friction for new users. When someone switches to Monzo or bunq, they’re not met with a wall of confusing strings. They're greeted by a clean, brand-first interface that makes banking feel like browsing a familiar app - not decoding a tax return. For example, thanks to Tapix, bunq went from 300 to 17,000 logos and kept up with Gen Z’s demand for visual clarity.
Personal Finance Management Apps
Apps like Emma, Money Dashboard, YNAB, or Spendee are built around one core promise: “We’ll help you make sense of your spending.” But that promise falls apart fast if every third transaction looks like this: B2B PRIME*OK8ST8II5
Instead, what PFMs need and depend on is clarity. Not just in categories (“Food & Drink” vs “Shopping”), but in brand-level context.
Imagine budgeting without knowing if a $24.70 charge went to a restaurant or a carsharing. It’s the kind of friction that leads people to abandon the app altogether. PFMs that use enriched merchant names and logos can offer unique features like spend tracking by brand, recurring subscription recognition or smart alerts.
By linking real merchants to real brand identities, PFMs can finally deliver on their core value prop: financial clarity. Once merchant-level data is standardised, it unlocks whole new features - like automatic subscription detection, merchant-based insights, and personalised savings nudges. Considering a lot of PFMs work with open banking data and connect more accounts into one, this little shift cleans up a whole lot of mess.
Traditional Banks
The traditional financial institutions with legacy systems and decades of infrastructure are also catching up fast. European banks like Raiffeisenbank, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas face a unique challenge: balancing decades of customer trust with the rising demand for digital-first services.
Today, even a 58-year-old farmer expects the same intuitive banking experience that his 19-year-old grandson gets on Revolut. That means clear merchant names, recognisable logos and category clarity.
Raiffeisenbank, for example, has been rolling out an improved UX in its mobile app and internet banking in the Czech Republic. They’ve been gradually integrating more enriched data behind the scenes – clearer transaction descriptions, better categorisation, and more structured merchant metadata. Partners Banka also made proper categorisation a key tech stack priority from day one, recognising the importance of clear and easily understandable transactions.
So what traditional banks are doing more often now is layering on modern APIs from providers like Tapix that sit on top of existing infrastructure. They just feed in transaction data and get back clean, structured results: merchant name and logo, category, payment gateways, phone numbers and more.
Banks can modernise their interfaces - mobile, web, statements - without a complete backend overhaul.
Incorporating accurate merchant names and logos into transaction data might seem minor, but it significantly enhances user experience, builds trust, and streamlines operations.
For more details on how enrichment solutions can benefit your bank, explore the Tapix offerings.
