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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://support.pexcard.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Custom Merchant Categories The PEX system gives organizations a set of flexible tools to manage spending, including the ability to create Custom Merchant Categories. The original PEX Merchant Categories are broad-based.
  • The category “Travel & Transportation,” for instance, includes hundreds of Visa Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for airlines, hotels, rental cars, taxis, tolls, and more.
  • An Administrator might want cardholders to fly only on certain airlines, or stay only at certain hotels, however
  • Administrators can create Custom Merchant Categories to help effect policies like that.
Administrators can manage a group of PEX Merchant Categories as part of a Spend Rule.
  1. When using Custom Merchant Categories, the same MCC might sit in two different Merchant Categories that you have selected for a cardholder Spend Rule, or that are in a Spending Ruleset.
    • For example, you might create a Custom Merchant Category that includes MCCs:
      • #7523, Automobile Parking Lots and Garages
      • #4784, Tolls, Road and Bridge Fees
      • #5542, Automated Fuel Dispensers
    • If you then also select the PEX Merchant Category called Travel, then those three codes in the Custom Merchant Category would be duplicated, because they already exist in Travel.
  2. This will not cause a problem with cardholder spending. But please be aware that:
    • When you enable two separate Merchant Categories that contain one or more of the same MCCs, a warning message will appear to tell you that this can create conflicts
    • The lower maximum purchase limit will be applied to the card when there is more than one maximum purchase limit associated with an MCC
    • If the spend limit for an MCC in Category A is $500, for instance, and the spend limit for the same MCC in Category B is $200, then the PEX system will enforce the $200 spend limit
  3. The cardholder will have access to all merchants included in both categories. The cardholder will be not be limited only to the merchants included in the custom merchant category.
Last modified on May 4, 2026