A charge from MSBILL.INFO or MICROSOFT*STORE on your statement

MICROSOFT*STORE, MICROSOFT MSBILL.INFO and MICROSOFT*MICROSOFT 365 P are charges to a Microsoft account: a Microsoft 365 or Xbox subscription, or something bought in the Microsoft Store or inside a game. The web address msbill.info in the name forwards to Microsoft’s own page on unrecognized charges.¹

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. When we counted on 9 October 2026, Microsoft made 910 lines from 83 state offices, schools and courts, from July 2017 to August 2026.⁸

msbill.info, then WA, IE or SG: how the line ends

Most people do not see MSBILL.INFO alone. They see it after a Microsoft name and before two or three letters. These five lines were copied from statements by people asking about them on Microsoft’s own Q&A site; each is that person’s own account of what their bank showed.¹⁰

On a card statement the merchant’s name is usually followed by its city and its state or country. On these lines msbill.info stands where the city would be. The letters after it match the Microsoft company that sells in the buyer’s part of the world, as Microsoft Store’s terms of sale name them:¹¹

• WA: Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington. It runs the Microsoft Store in the United States, and sells to North and South America outside the US and Canada.
• IE (or IRL, or Ireland in full): Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, Dublin. It runs the Microsoft Store in Ireland, and sells to the Middle East and Africa.
• SG: Microsoft Regional Sales Pte Ltd, Singapore. It sells to Asia, except China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

That the letters stand for these companies is our reading of the terms; Microsoft does not explain the letters anywhere we could find. The 36 in Microsoft*Microsoft 36 is Microsoft 365 cut off by the length limit; a Delaware school’s July 2025 renewal, in the table below, was cut the same way.

A pending charge that disappears. Microsoft’s help page used to say that when you buy from it with a card for the first time, “a small authorization hold is often placed to verify billing info. These charges will be reversed.”⁹ The $105.49 “PENDING PRE-AUTH” above is the kind of line that sentence describes; ask your bank whether a line is still pending before you dispute it.

The list of names Microsoft took down

Until the end of 2022, Microsoft’s page on unknown charges was called “How to investigate a billing charge from Microsoft or MSbill.info”. Under the heading “MSbill.info doesn’t look like Microsoft” it listed the names its consumer charges would show: MICROSOFT*XBOX, MICROSOFT*XBOX LIVE GOLD, MICROSOFT*XBOX GAME PASS, MICROSOFT*EA ACCESS, MICROSOFT*STORE, MICROSOFT*OFFICE, MICROSOFT*OFFICE 365, MICROSOFT*ACCOUNT, MICROSOFT*ONEDRIVE, MICROSOFT*OUTLOOK, MSbill.info and bill.ms.net. It added: “If the entry on your billing statement isn’t in one of the above formats, it was not from Microsoft and may be an unauthorized charge.”⁹

The archived copy of 8 December 2022 still has the list. The copy of 1 January 2023 does not, and neither does the page today.⁹¹ A volunteer on Microsoft Q&A was still quoting the list to a worried cardholder in April 2024.¹⁰ Do not use it as a test: it never had MICROSOFT*MICROSOFT 365 P, which Delaware’s cards were already showing in May 2020, while the list was still up, nor the business invoice lines in the table above.⁸

One subscription, four names

A Delaware charter school renewed a yearly Microsoft subscription every July. Each year the name on the statement was different:⁸

$69.99 and $99.99 are the old and new yearly prices of Microsoft 365 Personal. Microsoft raised them in January 2025, from $69.99 to $99.99 a year for Personal and from $99.99 to $129.99 for Family.⁷ A Family line in the data, in June 2026, is $129.99.⁸ So a yearly charge that is $30 higher than last year can be the same plan at the new price, not a second account.

Why Microsoft says you might not recognize it

Microsoft lists these as the most likely causes:¹

• A subscription with recurring billing turned on.
• Someone you know, such as a family member, bought something with your card.
• A charge that was declined before was charged again.
• A pre-order or split order was shipped.
• An in-app purchase in an app or game. Candy Crush purchases, for one, may read MICROSOFT*CANDY CRUSH, and Microsoft sends you to King for those.

Charged twice. Microsoft says that when a payment fails it “will keep trying until successful”, so a late payment and the next on-time payment can land close together, for the same amount. Its test: a monthly subscription charged three times in the last 90 days has not been charged twice. If your bank shows two charges and your account shows one, another account, for example a family member’s, may be using the same card.²

A long code after the name: a business invoice

Lines like MSFT * E0300EYFFD or MICROSOFT#G036923676 are not consumer purchases. A Microsoft support moderator wrote on Microsoft’s Q&A site that business invoice numbers start with “G” on Microsoft’s newer billing and with “E” on the older one.⁵ The codes on these lines have that shape; that they are the invoice numbers is our reading. Microsoft tells business customers to match a card payment against the invoice in the Microsoft 365 admin center, because it does not send payment receipts.⁶

The code changes every month, and so does the punctuation. A Department of Safety and Homeland Security unit paid $45 invoices, two or three at a time, on the 9th of every month. In 2024 they read MICROSOFT G…, MICROSOFT#G… and, from August, MICROSOFT-G…, often two styles in the same month; in July 2024 one of them read MICROSOFT MSBILL.INFO instead. A school district’s $115.70 read MICROSOFT G… in September 2023, MICROSOFT MSBILL.INFO in October and MICROSOFT#G… in November.⁸ If you are matching a business statement, match on the date and amount, not the code.

Will Microsoft give the money back?

For a subscription bought directly from Microsoft, its policy says that in most cases you can get a refund within 30 days of the first purchase or before the first renewal, whichever comes first, and that you are “entitled to a refund of your most recent recurring billing charge if you cancel your subscription within 30 days after payment”. That second refund is “limited to one time per Microsoft account, per subscription product”. You ask for it by canceling: Microsoft decides during cancellation whether a refund applies.³

A subscription bought through Google Play or Apple is refunded by them, not by Microsoft.³ In Delaware’s data, 7 of the 32 Microsoft 365 lines are refunds. Two matched a $69.99 charge to the same office and came back 1 and 15 days after it; a $99.99 Office 365 Home charge came back after 11 days.⁸

How to find it and stop it

1. Find the account Sign in at account.microsoft.com with each Microsoft account in the household. Under Manage your payments, choose Investigate to look for other accounts using the card.¹
2. Turn off recurring billing Go to account.microsoft.com/services, find the subscription, choose Manage, then Turn off recurring billing. You keep using it until the expiry date. If there is no Manage link, you may be signed in with the wrong account, or the subscription was bought through Apple, Google or a shop, which handle the cancellation.⁴
3. Cancel within 30 days for a refund Cancel the subscription itself to get the refund check described above.³
4. If it is not your account, go to your bank Tell the bank the card is compromised and ask for a new number, as Microsoft advises.¹ Ask what the deadline for a dispute is; it depends on the bank, the card network and the reason.

Is this a scam?

The names are real: Delaware paid 910 of them with state cards, and Microsoft itself once listed MSbill.info as one of its own.⁸⁹ A real name only tells you the money went to Microsoft, not that you or your family made the purchase. None of the 910 names carries a phone number. Microsoft’s page on unknown charges sends you to Contact Microsoft Support on its own site, so start there rather than at a number found by searching the name.¹ If no account you can sign in to shows the charge, treat it as one you did not make.

Why this page is on a site about held money

This site records payment companies that hold back money that belongs to someone else. Microsoft is not in the incident record; the closest part of this page is the once-per-subscription refund rule. Subscriptions bought in an app store show up as APPLE.COM/BILL or GOOGLE *; other office software as ADOBE *, DROPBOX* and ZOOM.US. Other lines are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. Microsoft Support, "How to investigate a billing charge from Microsoft": Manage your payments and Investigate, the five likely causes, MICROSOFT*CANDY CRUSH, telling the bank the card is compromised. We also checked on 9 October 2026 that http://msbill.info forwards to this page. support.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
2. Microsoft Support, "I've been charged twice": retried payments, the 90-day test, other accounts on the same card. support.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
3. Microsoft Support, "Microsoft subscription refund policy": the 30-day windows, once per account per product, eligibility decided during cancellation, Google Play and Apple purchases. support.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
4. Microsoft Support, "Turn recurring billing on or off for a Microsoft subscription": account.microsoft.com/services, Manage, third-party billing partners. support.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
5. Microsoft Q&A, "What's the difference between an invoice beginning with G and an E", answer by a moderator marked Microsoft External Staff, 5 May 2026. learn.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
6. Microsoft Learn, "View or download your invoice in the Microsoft 365 admin center": no payment receipts; match card payments to the invoice. learn.microsoft.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
7. CNBC, "Microsoft raises price of consumer Microsoft 365 first time since 2013", 16 January 2025: Personal from $69.99 to $99.99 a year, Family from $99.99 to $129.99. cnbc.com. Read on 9 October 2026. Archived copy of 9 October 2026.
8. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields "merchant", "trans_dt", "dept_name", "div_name" and "merchandise_amt". Lines whose name starts with MICROSOFT or MSFT. Queried and counted on 9 October 2026.
9. Microsoft Support, "How to investigate a billing charge from Microsoft or MSbill.info", as archived: the section “MSbill.info doesn’t look like Microsoft” with its twelve names, and the sentence on authorization holds for a new card. Archived copy of 17 December 2021; archived copy of 8 December 2022, list still there; archived copy of 1 January 2023, list gone. Read on 15 October 2026.
10. Microsoft Q&A, questions by cardholders quoting their statements, each read on 15 October 2026: April 2021, microsoft*micro msbill.info (archived); April 2023, Microsoft*PC 1 Month msbill.info Ireland (archived); April 2024, MICROSOFT*STORE MSBILL.INFO SG, with a volunteer’s reply quoting Microsoft’s list (archived); November 2025, MICROSOFT*STORE MSBILL.INFO IE (archived); January 2026, Microsoft*Microsoft 36 msbill.info WA (archived).
11. Microsoft Store, "Terms of Sale", the seller named in three markets: United States, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (archived 11 October 2026); Ireland, Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited (archived 5 January 2026); Singapore, which also names the sellers for the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia (archived 8 December 2025). Read on 15 October 2026.