Mastercard under fire for tracking customer credit card purchases to sell to advertisers



Credit card firm refuses to reveal 'proprietary' technique that allows it to anonymously track customers and target them with online ads



Pr ivacy campaigners accuse firm of ' treating details of our personal behaviour like their own property'

System tracks information about the date, time, amount and merchant

Credit card firm says system is only operational in US

Mastercard has come under fire for tracking its US customer's purchases and selling the data to advertisers.

The credit card company’s MasterCard Advisors Media Solutions Group boasts it can target the most affluent customers and tell advertisers who is most likely to buy their products.

The firm does this by tracking a consumer's credit card details - although it says their identity remains secret.

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Mastercard has admitted it tracks its customers transaction so that it can sell data to advertisers about their spending habits - but claims the system never reveals their personal details.

However, it refuses to reveal how the system works, and a privacy group today accused the firm of ' treating details of our personal behaviour like their own property.'



'The foundation of all of our solutions is transaction data,' Susan Grossman, senior vice president at MasterCard Advisors Media Solutions Group said in a presentation seen by MailOnline .

When a consumer swipes a credit card in a store, she says MasterCard’s data-packaging division receives information about the date, time, amount and merchant.

The firm tracks billions of anonymous transactions from customers, which it then aggregates into small segments which comprise of similar transactions.

This allows the firm to sell details of these very specific 'segments' of data to advertisers.



'What if you could know the biggest week for spend and then reach those shoppers who are twice as likely to spend leading up to that week and then create campaigns?', the firm asks in an online presentation .

Called 'Leveraging MasterCard Data Insights to Reach Holiday Shoppers', the presentation is designed to attract advertisers.

However, the firm refuses to reveal how offline MasterCard purchases would follow you online to make you a target for specific ads.



In the presentation, Grossman called MasterCard’s methods 'proprietary.'



The online presentation which reveals Mastercard's tracking of its customer's purchases to sell to advertisers.

But she says none of the data collected or sold includes personally identifiable information such as names or addresses.

MasterCard, which processes 34 billion transactions a year in 210 countries and territories, said it started the initiative in February.



Ms Grossman said protecting privacy was 'core' to MasterCard’s values.

'We recognise that consumers entrust us with their information so it is of the utmost importance that we ensure no individual or personally identifiable information is used in our media solutions product,' she said.

Ms Grossman said the company’s main clients for much of their history had been their issuing banks and for them MasterCard did a significant amount of statistical modelling and predictive modelling and found that those propensity models were application to companies other than banks, such as media.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: 'If this data has value, then it should be up to Mastercard to ask customers for permission to use their information and offer consumers something in return.



'Instead they are treating details of our personal behaviour like their own property to be bundled up and sold on without any regard to what customers might want.

The slides reveal that Mastercard collects transaction from its customer to use to target advertisments at them

'Have Mastercard made any effort to seek customer’s consent for processing their shopping habits and selling it on? How do consumers opt out? It’s exactly this kind of behaviour that leads consumers to question whether companies are more interested in their own profit than respecting people’s privacy.'



Mastercard today confirmed the scheme's existence.



A spokesman for Mastercard said: 'MasterCard is committed to protecting individual privacy.



'No personally identifiable information is collected, disclosed or used in the analysis and development of any products or services.

'In creating MasterCard Audiences, MasterCard uses aggregated and anonymized transaction data.



'MasterCard’s transaction data does not contain the cardholder’s name or any other personal data.

'The service leverages anonymized and aggregated transaction data to provide clients with insight into trends around US consumer buying behavior based on custom audience segments or specified categories including Restaurant, Hotel, Travel, Retail, Financial Services, Automotive, Entertainment, and Telco/Cable.'



The firm also said the scheme was only running in the US.

In the presentation the firm boasts of having access to 1.8 billion payment cards for its data

VIDEO: MasterCard reveals the "anatomy of a transaction":



