Blocking or restricting merchants on Ramp

Note: This article primarily applies to Ramp Administrators. Cardholders may find other articles in the Cards and transactions section to be more applicable.

Overview

Ramp offers the ability to restrict which vendors your company's Ramp cards and funds can transact with or be charged by.

Whether this is to prevent a vendor from charging you again, prevent employees from transacting with certain vendors, or only allow certain vendors on cards and funds, this will help control and monitor your company's spend.

There are two levels of merchant restriction on Ramp: one at the card or funds level and one at the company level. Please note that in order to enter a vendor on a block/allow list, there will have to have been at least one transaction from that vendor on a Ramp card before you try to add them to the list.

Card restriction

To restrict merchants on a single card or funds:

Select the card or funds you wish to add the merchant restriction to.
Click Actions > Edit .
Scroll down to the Advanced section > Spending controls and restrictions > Restrict categories & vendors field.
From there, you can choose which categories and merchants are blocked on a Ramp card or funds or which merchants should only be able to transact on that card or funds.

For example, you may not want this card or funds to transact at Amazon: use Blocked merchants and add "Amazon" to prevent Amazon charges from being made.
Alternatively, if you wanted a card to only be used at Amazon (such as making a vendor-specific card), you'd use Allowed merchants and add "Amazon" to block all other merchants.

Save your changes, and then you'll be all set!

Company merchant restrictions

Want to make sure no one at your company spends at a certain vendor? We now have a global restriction setting that blocks charges from added merchants across all your company's Ramp cards and funds!

To access this global restriction list:

Go to Policy > Global approvals and restrictions
Scroll to Restricted Merchants
Add the merchants you wish to block globally, and you're all set!

Note: If a merchant is added to your company’s global restrictions, you won’t be able to allowlist it on a single card.

Why an allowed merchant may still be declined

When you add a merchant to your allowed merchants list, Ramp saves a specific merchant entry based on past transaction data. However, the same real-world vendor can process charges under different names on the card network. These different names are called merchant descriptors, and each distinct descriptor may correspond to a separate merchant entry in Ramp.

Each distinct descriptor can appear as a separate merchant entry in Ramp. If you add only one entry to your allowed merchants list but a charge comes through under a different descriptor for the same vendor, the transaction may be declined because Ramp treats these as different merchants.

How to prevent descriptor mismatch declines

Select all instances of a merchant. When adding a merchant to your allowed or blocked list, some merchants may have more than one entry. Select each instance to cover all of that vendor's known descriptors. You can search by merchant name in the restriction settings to see all available entries.
Check the merchant descriptor on a declined transaction. If a transaction is declined due to a merchant restriction and you believe the merchant should be allowed, check the declined transaction details. The merchant descriptor, which is the name the vendor used on the card network, may differ from the merchant name you see in Ramp. You can find the merchant descriptor by opening the transaction and selecting Copy merchant description from the options menu.
Report incorrect merchant info. If a merchant is labeled incorrectly or a descriptor is not mapping to the expected merchant, select Report incorrect info from the transaction to flag it for correction.
Ramp auto-detects some mismatches. When a transaction is declined due to a merchant restriction, Ramp automatically checks whether the declined merchant may be the same vendor as one on your allowed list. If a match is detected, Ramp corrects the merchant assignment and notifies you by text message.