[Due for payment 2026-07-07] Home - Merchant row shows (none)/Expense when merchant is empty

[applause-bot]

If you haven’t already, check out our contributing guidelines for onboarding and email contributors@expensify.com to request to join our Slack channel!

---

Version Number: 9.4.17-0
Reproducible in staging?: Yes
Reproducible in production?: N/A - new feature, doesn't exist in prod
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack: #93451
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers): sdjnoisdjdosijsonssjo@gmail.com
Issue reported by: Applause Internal Team
Bug source: Exploratory - Significant User Experience Deterioration
Device used: Mac 26.5 / Chrome
App Component: Money Requests

Action Performed:

Precondition:

• Create a scan expense with invalid receipt that will fail the scanning.

1. Go to staging.new.expensify.com
2. Go to Home.

Expected Result:

Merchant row should be empty when merchant is empty.

Actual Result:

Merchant row shows (none) when merchant is empty.
For p2p expense, merchant row shows Expense when merchant is empty.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome Safari

Screenshots/Videos

Bug7188080_1782171071184.8.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Applause Internal Information
Exported by: Mita Rachim
Bug ID: 7188080

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @mallenexpensify

[applause-bot]

While Applause doesn't embed attachments for this bug, here are the links for quick view:
https://platform.applause.com/services/links/v1/external/9e0eb5bb9d394130fa41b39155c58ac95541e13942ae19b56cd59ff7000d2c79

[melvin-bot]

You have been assigned to this deploy blocker because you recently merged this PR: #93451

[melvin-bot]

💬 A slack conversation has been started in #expensify-open-source

[github-actions]

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

1. Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
2. Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
3. Fix the issue yourself.

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

What is the root cause of that problem?

The new Recently added Home section (added in #93451) renders the merchant straight from getMerchant(), which returns the raw stored placeholder values instead of an empty string.

When a merchant is genuinely empty, the transaction's merchant field still holds a placeholder:

• (none) → CONST.TRANSACTION.PARTIAL_TRANSACTION_MERCHANT (scan/distance expenses)
• Expense → CONST.TRANSACTION.DEFAULT_MERCHANT (manual/p2p expenses)

getMerchant() returns these placeholders verbatim. The hook calls it directly at useRecentlyAddedData.ts:171 with no placeholder filtering, so the row shows (none) / Expense.

The canonical table row already guards against exactly this — TransactionItemRow/index.tsx:43-44 returns '' when the merchant equals either placeholder. The Recently added row bypasses that helper.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

Normalize the merchant in useRecentlyAddedData.ts:171 so empty merchants resolve to an empty string, mirroring the existing table-row logic. Use isMerchantMissing(transaction) (already exported from TransactionUtils) and map to '' when it returns true:

merchant: isMerchantMissing(transaction) ? '' : getMerchant(transaction),

isMerchantMissing relies on isInvalidMerchantValue, which treats '', (none), and Expense all as missing — covering both reported symptoms in one check.

Why this is the right scope

• Both reported symptoms ((none) for scan, Expense for p2p) trace to the same two placeholder constants, and isInvalidMerchantValue already handles both, so a single guard fixes the whole bug rather than an edge case.
• This matches the behavior the rest of the app already uses for transaction merchant display, so there's no new convention introduced.
• Alternative: extract the TransactionItemRow placeholder-stripping into a shared helper and reuse it in both places. Cleaner long-term, but larger scope than a deploy-blocker warrants.

Confidence: High — root cause is a direct, verifiable code path in the PR flagged as the deploy-blocker source, and the placeholder constants match the exact strings reported.

---

Next Steps for Contributor+ team:
To accept: @MelvinBot implement [this](https://github.com/Expensify/App/issues/94249) to create a draft PR.
To refine: @MelvinBot <your feedback>
To reject: Explain why you are rejecting Melvin's proposal.

[ZhenjaHorbach]

Minor issue
Let's remove the deploy blocker

[grgia]

Fine to demote as blocker, but we should prioritize this one in the queue @adamgrzybowski