Merchant Category Code Investigation at Stripe

Pooja's core work at Stripe involved reviewing merchant category codes — the classifications assigned to businesses based on their stated activities and the information they had provided. Getting these right mattered: the codes determined how merchants were treated across Stripe's systems and by financial partners.

In one investigation, she was reviewing a code that had already been assigned. The initial classification pointed in one direction, but as she reviewed the available information more closely, she found inconsistencies between the assigned code and what the business was actually doing. The initial hypothesis did not hold up under scrutiny.

Rather than accepting the existing classification, she went back to the underlying details. She gathered additional information from multiple sources, identified exactly where the mismatch was, and built a clear rationale for why a different code was the correct one. She then reassigned the code and documented her reasoning for the quality review team.

The experience reinforced a principle she carried into her investment research work: the purpose of investigation is to test a hypothesis, not to confirm one. If the evidence points elsewhere, the right move is to follow it and explain why.