# Reading the response

> In what order to read a Merchant API response, why a 200 does not mean a merchant was found, and what Noryo actually does with each of your fields.

**A `200` does not mean a merchant was found.** It means the request was settled. What the engine answered is in `enrichment.status`.

## Reading order

1. **The HTTP status.** `200`: a settled result. Any other status: a Problem Details object, to handle according to its `code`. See [Errors](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/error-handling).
2. **`enrichment.status`.** `resolved` or `refresh_recalculated`: complete identity. `partial`: incomplete or uncertain identity. `not_found`: nobody.
3. **`enrichment.reason`**, for `partial` and `not_found`: why.
4. **`merchant`**, if the status allows: `name`, `category`, `logo_url`, `location`.
5. **`merchant.confidence`**, as a ranking signal, not as a probability.
6. **`usage`** and the `Noryo-Idempotency-Replayed` header, if you track your consumption.

```text
resolved              identity complete, above the policy threshold
partial               something is missing, or confidence below threshold
not_found             the engine answered, and its answer is "nobody"
refresh_recalculated  a refresh produced a new complete result
```

`not_found` is a normal, complete answer, not an error and not a failure. The failure case is `503 engine_error`, and it is billed to nobody.

## `confidence` is a score, not a probability

```json
"confidence": 0.94
```

**Do not read this as "94 % chance of being correct."** Noryo has measured that the ordering of this score is not monotonic at the top of the range: a 0.99 is less reliable than a 0.90. See [Confidence](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/confidence).

## `location` is an object, or `null`

```json
"location": { "city": "PARIS", "postal_code": "75018" }
"location": { "city": "MULHOUSE" }
"location": null
```

**The key is always present.** Absent and unknown look too alike for you to have to tell them apart. See [Location](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/models/location).

## What Noryo does with your input

`descriptor`, `amount`, `currency`, `occurred_at`, `country` and `mcc` all enter the **economic identity**: two calls differing only by amount are two distinct enrichments, billed separately.

Only `descriptor` currently drives resolution. In particular, **`country` does not filter the answer**. That is measured, not accidental: on our calibration set, a strict "declared country must equal merchant country" filter removed 95 resolved results to correct 15 genuinely wrong ones, and on cross-border homonyms, where the gain should have been greatest, it removed 36 to correct 1. It is recorded in the calibration dataset and will be re-measured as non-French coverage grows.

**The raw descriptor is not retained.** Retention is 0 days: no column of the module can store it, and it never appears in a log.

## `currency` and `country` must be upper case

`eur` is rejected with `400`, and so is `fr`. This is deliberate: the canonical form compares these fields **verbatim**, so `EUR` and `eur` would be two distinct economic identities and two invoices for what you meant as one call. The validator refuses the ambiguity rather than normalising behind your back. See [Validation](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/requests/validation).

## What to do with each result

| Result | Sensible use |
|---|---|
| `resolved`, `refresh_recalculated` | Display the identity; store it on your side |
| `partial` | Display with caution, or have it reviewed; see [Partial data](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/partial-data) |
| `not_found` | Display the raw descriptor; see [not_found](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/not-found) |
| `503 engine_error` | Retry with the same `Idempotency-Key`; see [Retries](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/operations/retries) |

## In this section

- [not_found](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/not-found): a result, not an error.
- [Confidence](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/confidence): what the score measures, and what it does not.
- [Partial data](https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/results/partial-data): `partial`, omitted fields and unknown location.

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Canonical page: https://developer.noryo.app/en-GB/merchant/reading-the-response