Credit card data to target online advertising?

The Wall Street Journal says that Mastercard’s proposals have been toned down from earlier “exploratory conversations” which envisaged linking purchase data to individuals. Now the firm says it is looking to sell marketers an analysis of anonymous, aggregated data – similar to what Visa is proposing.

Both Visa and Mastercard already analyse the billions of transactions they process each year, albeit on an anonymous basis. Mastercard has a division called Mastercard Advisors that offers information and consulting services based on the analysis of this data.

Read the Wall Street Journal report here.