Comment by curiousthought
5 months ago
This is called Level 3 data, and any merchant can choose to provide it for a reduction in the transaction fees they pay.
Here's a small comment thread from a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41213632
So in essence the merchant pays with my data?
In theory you’re already paying the merchant fee in the “price”. So merchant found a way to improve margins and credit card companies found a new revenue source
Yes, though people also welcome the extra cash back or other card benefits.
Apple Card does not sell this data, IIRC. But offers a lower cash back than many other cards.
True, while Google sees roughly 85% of all American cardholder swipes and doesn't need to sell it since they're making the ad market...
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This is the real reason why they can afford to give you cash back.
It’s honestly crazy that we allow companies to sell our data — and even financially incentivize companies to share our data like this.
The problem is that to you it seems like your data but to Walgreens they see it as theirs. They generated it with their point of sale system.
The data is about a transaction that you made, but they generated all of it.
Until we have agreement as a society about what “my data” means, this kind of stuff is going to run rampant.
>what “my data” means
It makes me wonder, if everyone 'owned' their own data, I wonder if it could be used as a form of UBI. Everyone has data from using services, everyone owns it, everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday.
This is only just a shower thought I had the other day though, there are probably many pitfalls when it comes to such an idea.
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>to you it seems like your data but to Walgreens they see it as theirs
the value of this data comes from what did I buy, what else do I buy, where am I, who I am, etc.
to your point, Walgreens does not sell to their competitor CVS data about what they sell, when, and where.
so if that really is their argument, it's refutable.
This is fairly easily answered through legislation like the GDPR which classes this data as personal data if it’s associated with an identified or identifiable person.
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It’s amazing how little control we have over information that is the most personal essence of our lives.
Why do we have zero insight, no control. Nothing.
I hate it so much.
Thanks for the details.
> choose to provide it for a reduction in the transaction fees they pay.
That would explain why I can use my credit card for rent without a transaction fee! No free lunch!
Who is Level 3 data shared with, ie who is the aggregator? Is it the credit card bank then aggregates and sells it?
Is there any documentation on this to read further? I.e. what the different levels contain and how much on average is the cost reduction for the merchant.
Here is implementation documentation from Mastercard about l3: https://na-gateway.mastercard.com/api/documentation/integrat...
The cost reduction is very small, it’s applied to interchange fees. I’ve been directly responsible for implementing this functionality on payment gateways for multiple processors because it helps reduce fraud holds as well.
Separate question, what are your ethics around the surveillance of Americans' economic activities by private actors? What "rights" are relevant in this space and which do you subscribe to?
I'm not going to debate you about anything, I just don't get the chance to ask insiders any of these questions.
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Is this data requestable via a GDPR takeout?
searching for “mastercard level 3 data takeout” and such bring up the same 5 pages that are not relevant.