A charge from ETSY.COM on your statement

A line that starts ETSY.COM, usually followed by a star or a dash and part of a shop’s name, is an order placed on Etsy, the marketplace for handmade, vintage and craft goods. Etsy says that when you buy from one of its sellers, Etsy is the merchant of record, “which means you will see a transaction from Etsy on your statement”, processed in Brooklyn, New York, or Dublin, Ireland, depending on where you were when you bought.¹ The letters after the star are the seller’s shop, cut short.

What it looks like on a real statement

The State of Delaware publishes every purchase its employees make on state cards, with the merchant name as the bank received it. On 15 October 2026 it had 525 lines from Etsy, September 2014 to September 2026.⁹ They come in six forms:

Delaware’s records drop the town. Other public card statements show the whole line, and the town is not always a town:

• Etsy.com*RoadrunnerWoo BROOKLYN NY, $239.51, 6 January 2026, on the Village of Lake Orion’s Comerica card statement in Michigan.¹⁰
• ETSY.COM*MULTIPLE SHOP with ETSY.COM, NY as the town, $104.38 in August 2026, and the same name with BROOKLYN, NY, $25.55 in September 2026, on Winnebago County’s card reports in Illinois.¹¹
• ETSY.COM HANDTFABRICS, ETSY.COM CRAFTYIMAGINATIO and four lines of ETSY.COM MULTIPLE SHOPS in August 2026, in South Carolina’s state card report, which prints names without punctuation and shows up to 16 letters of the shop.¹²
• Etsy.Com - Caledonianforg and three lines of Etsy.Com - Multiple Shops on 1 September 2022, on Southend-on-Sea City Council’s card report in England.¹³

Reading the shop name

The letters after the star or the dash are the start of the seller’s shop name, run together without spaces. How much you see depends on the format and on your bank: in Delaware’s records 158 of the 211 dash lines stop at 13 or 14 letters, and 86 of the 112 star lines stop at exactly 13.⁹ So COZYCUPPACAND is the first 13 letters of a longer name. Search Etsy’s shops for those letters, and compare the amount with the order confirmation email.

MULTIPLE SHOP (or MULTIPLE SHOPS) means one checkout that paid more than one seller. 41 of Delaware’s lines say it.⁹ A buyer on Etsy’s Reddit forum put it this way in 2021: the statement shows the shop name, “but if I purchased from more than one shop in a single transaction it says ‘multiple shops’.”¹⁵ The statement will not tell you which shops; the order confirmation email will.

The format changed in early 2025

In Delaware’s records the last ETSY.COM - line is dated 11 February 2025 and the star form takes over from 28 March 2025; apart from one line in October 2023 there is no overlap.⁹ The same shops crossed over. One office paid ETSY.COM - RANDOMANDTHAT $2,025 on 16 January 2025 and ETSY.COM*RANDOMANDTHAT $2,025 again on 6 May 2025. Another bought from ETSY.COM - ARCHETYPE360 five times from April 2023 to August 2024, and from ETSY.COM*ARCHETYPE360 four times from March 2025 to July 2026, for about $40 to $45 each time.⁹ If you are searching your online banking for an older Etsy order, search for ETSY alone, not the whole line.

People have asked on Etsy’s Reddit forum for years what the line will say, and got different answers: “ETSY.COM BROOKLYN NY” in January 2020; “Etsy, not the store name or the item” and “my bank statements include shop name” in the same thread in March 2021.¹⁵ The records above show they can all be right: Delaware has 83 lines that say ETSY.COM and nothing else alongside the ones with a shop name.⁹

The page Etsy still links to is gone

Etsy’s help article “Credit Card Security Information” ends with a section called “Unrecognized credit card charges”. It holds a single link: “Learn what to do if you see a charge from Etsy on your credit card statement that you don’t recognize.”² That link goes to article 360001959428, “Unrecognized Credit Card Charges”. The web archive last saved it working on 18 October 2021; by 19 November 2021 it answered “not found”, and it still did when saved in August 2025.³ Etsy’s help-centre API, which lists every published article, answers “RecordNotFound” for that number today.³

The text did not vanish entirely. Its first two paragraphs, on Etsy being the merchant of record and on family members using a card, now sit inside a different article about hacked accounts.¹ What is missing is the 2019 version’s offer: write to verification@etsy.com with “Attn: Risk” in the subject, the cardholder’s name and billing address, the last four digits of the card and the exact amount and date, and “an agent will look into the charge and reply to your email in the next 24 hours.”³ By October 2021 that had become a contact form and a reply “once we have completed our review”, with no time given.³

Why it charged

• Someone you know bought something. Etsy’s first suggestion is a family member, friend or coworker “who may have had your permission to use your card”.¹
• It is still a pending charge. Etsy screens orders before they go through. “Most orders are processed within 72 hours”, and you may see a pending charge during that time that “will only be finalized when the purchase has been successfully processed.”⁴
• It is a seller’s bill, not a purchase. Etsy charges sellers’ cards for their fees: “On the first of every month, you’re charged for any outstanding fees from the previous month”, and Etsy says that turning off auto-billing does not withdraw your permission to charge the card; only closing the Etsy account does.⁸ On 1 November 2022 a buyer posted that a charge from “Etsycom seller bills” for $1.20 had appeared on their card, the second time it had happened, although they had “NEVER sold anything on Etsy”.¹⁴ That is the poster’s own account; the thread does not say what the charge turned out to be. If you have never opened a shop, treat a seller-fee charge as card misuse.

How to find the order and get your money back

1. Find the confirmation email Search every email address you use for transaction@etsy.com and the amount. Check spam and trash. Etsy says an order placed while signed out (as a guest) still has that email, and you can claim the order by signing in or creating an account with the same address.⁵ If you paid with PayPal, your Etsy account may be under your PayPal email address.⁵
2. Ask the shop to cancel “Etsy can’t cancel an order on a seller’s behalf.” Once payment has been reviewed, open the order, choose Message seller and ask them to cancel it.⁴
3. Open a case if the shop does not fix it For an item that does not arrive, arrives damaged or does not match the listing, you can open a case once the estimated delivery date has passed and 48 hours after you sent the seller a Help with order request. You need an Etsy account to do it.⁶
4. Know how long a refund takes A refund to a card “typically” takes 2 to 5 business days to appear; refunds to cards outside the US “usually take up to 30 days”. Some banks list it next to the original purchase date, not the date it was issued.⁷ Delaware’s records have 18 negative Etsy lines: refunds show up under the same Etsy names as charges.⁹
5. If nobody you know bought it, go to your bank Every step above needs the order email or an Etsy account. If you have neither, tell your card issuer you want to dispute the charge, give them the line exactly as printed with the date and amount, and ask for a new card. Ask what its deadline for disputes is; it depends on the bank, the card network and the reason.

Is it a scam?

A line starting ETSY.COM is a real charge from Etsy, and the shop in it is a real Etsy shop. But Etsy charges whatever card is used at its checkout, and a stolen card number works there like anywhere else. If there is no confirmation email and nobody with your card shops on Etsy, treat it as unauthorized and call your bank.

Other names

This site records payment companies that hold back money belonging to someone else. Etsy is not in the incident record; this page is here so that people searching for a name on a statement find an answer. An Etsy order paid through PayPal shows as PAYPAL *ETSY. Amazon orders show as AMAZON MKTPL, eBay orders as EBAY O* and the order number, and a small online shop of its own often shows as SP or SQ *. Other names are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. Etsy Help, “What to Do if You Suspect Fraud in Your Etsy Account”, section “I have unrecognized credit card charges”. help.etsy.com. Read through Etsy’s public help-centre API (/api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles/115015654008.json) on 15 October 2026; the web page refuses automated requests, and the web archive could not save it that day.
2. Etsy Help, “Credit Card Security Information”, last edited 16 April 2024. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026, including the link target in its last section. Archived copy of 24 April 2026.
3. Etsy Help, “Unrecognized Credit Card Charges” (article 360001959428), as saved by the web archive: copy of 19 July 2019 (with verification@etsy.com and the 24-hour reply); copy of 18 October 2021 (with the contact form); the archive recorded “not found” for the article’s address on 19 November 2021 and 27 August 2025. Both copies read on 15 October 2026. The help-centre API entry for the article answered “RecordNotFound” on 15 October 2026.
4. Etsy Help, “Why Is the Payment for My Purchase Still Processing?”. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026.
5. Etsy Help, “Why Can’t I Find My Order in My Account?”. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026.
6. Etsy Help, “How to Open a Case”. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026.
7. Etsy Help, “I Can’t Find My Refund for an Order”. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026.
8. Etsy Help, “How to Enroll in Auto-billing for Your Shop”. help.etsy.com. Read through the help-centre API on 15 October 2026.
9. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields “merchant”, “trans_dt” and “merchandise_amt”. Lines containing ETSY (names such as BETSY ROSS PIZZA excluded by us). Queried and counted on 15 October 2026.
10. Village of Lake Orion, Michigan, Comerica commercial card statement, January 2026 (PDF). Village meeting documents. Read on 15 October 2026. Archived copy of 15 October 2026.
11. Winnebago County, Illinois, card transaction detail, August 2026 and September 2026 (PDFs). Read on 15 October 2026. Archived copies of 15 October 2026: August, September.
12. South Carolina Office of the Comptroller General, State Government Credit Card Usage Report, August 2026 (PDF). cg.sc.gov. Read on 15 October 2026. Archived copy of 15 October 2026.
13. Southend-on-Sea City Council, government procurement card spending, September 2022 (PDF). southend.gov.uk. Read on 15 October 2026. Archived copy of 15 October 2026.
14. “Charged Etsy seller fee but not a seller”, r/Etsy, posted 1 November 2022. reddit.com. Read in a browser on 15 October 2026.
15. r/Etsy threads: “When you purchase something from Etsy, what’s the description on your credit card statement?”, posted 28 January 2020; “What will show up on my bank statements??”, posted 24 March 2021. Read in a browser on 15 October 2026.