• For travel/lodging Merchants, where a travel agent does not conduct the
transaction, the Merchant location may be any of the following countries:
– For airlines, passenger railways, cruise lines, and other travel Merchants, the
country from which the first leg of travel originates.
– For lodging Merchants, the country in which the stay occurs.
– For car/vehicle rental Merchants, the country in which the vehicle is rented
– For taxi/ride services, the country in which the journey originates
• For the purchase of travel where a travel agent conducts the transaction, the
location of the travel agent determines the Merchant outlet country, regardless of
whether the Merchant is the travel agent or the travel Merchant. The rules for other
card-absent transactions in the next bullet must be used to determine the location
of the travel agent.
• For other card-absent transactions, the Merchant outlet location may also be the
country where the Merchant conducts the business activity directly related to the
provision of the purchased goods or services to the cardholder. To assign an
additional country to a Merchant in this situation, the acquirer must ensure that the
Merchant meets all of the following criteria:
– The Merchant has a permanent location where the Merchant conducts
business activities and where those accountable for the sale or distribution of
the goods or services purchased in the specific transaction decide how
products are sold or distributed. The following are not, in themselves, sufficient
to satisfy these criteria:
1. A post office box, a mail-forwarding address, the address of the Merchant’s
law firm, agent, or vendor, or an email address
2. The location of a payments function, customer service function, servers or
URL, or the presence of a director or investor
– The Merchant assesses sales taxes on the transaction activity. Such taxes
must be assessed on the total amount of the sale of the goods or services.
(“Sales tax” is a generic term for a range of taxes levied on the sale, and
includes sales tax, good and service tax (GST), and value-added tax (VAT).
This condition does not apply when no sales taxes are assessable on the sale
according to local law.
– The location is the legal jurisdiction of the contract that governs the sale of the
goods or services (the transaction)
For clarity, if a card-absent Merchant (except in the case of direct sales by a
travel/lodging Merchant) qualifies for one or more additional Merchant outlet
locations, it may assign an additional location for a transaction only as the
location where the underlying business activity occurs for that specific
transaction.
• Acquirers of digital goods Merchants that qualify for MCCs 5815, 5816, 5817, or
5818 may be granted additional locations after submitting proof of additional
relevant business activity to Visa (including, but not limited to, the location of
servers).
• Within the European Economic Area (EEA), a Merchant may satisfy the criteria for
establishing a card-absent Merchant outlet location if all the relevant business
activity occurs within the EEA. That is, the activity must all occur within EEA
countries, but does not need to occur in a single EEA country. When the qualifying
business activity is spread across multiple EEA countries, the acquirer may assign