What is MCC 7995?

MCC 7995 is the merchant category code that card networks assign to betting and gambling transactions. Every card payment carries such a code, describing what kind of business took the money, and 7995 is the one that says: this was a bet. It is the mechanism behind most gambling card blocks. A bank does not need to recognise a casino's name to refuse it; it filters on the code. That is how card issuers implement a gambling block switch in their app, how some banks decline gambling on credit cards while allowing it on debit, and how jurisdictions that ban credit-card gambling enforce the rule at all. It is also why blocks are so uniform: the decision is made on one field, not on a merchant list somebody maintains. Two consequences are worth knowing. First, the code follows the transaction rather than the site, so a deposit routed through a payment intermediary can end up coded as something else and pass a block that should have caught it — a gap regulators have pushed back on. Second, 7995 transactions are commonly treated as cash advances on credit cards, which attracts a fee and interest from day one rather than at the end of a statement period.