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Comment by speedplane | Hacker News Reader

I've heard that this is not a very big business for Visa/Mastercard. That's because the credit card processors don't get many details on the purchase, they just know the amount, the user, and the bank they are sending the money to.

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My bank seems to know the origin and destination of all the plane tickets I buy (for example), so presumably the CC processor has this sort of information as well? I'm sure someone reading this is in the industry and can explain.

Plane tickets have an odd setup in CC processing systems where it actually shows origin/destination in the transaction information itself. The only other similar example I've seen has been in payment processors like Square or Paypal where they'll include both that it was a Paypal transaction and some customizable string showing the merchant who actually received the payment.

Other than those sorts of situations though, Visa/MC or the bank issuing the cards only know where the transaction occurred and how much it was and don't directly get SKU-level data on what was purchased barring some other sort of partnership with the merchant.

Yeah, this is called "Level 3 data" and can include line items from a receipt and other details of transactions.

False. Years ago I had a business credit card charge from either Target or Kmart where you could see the individual items. So some merchants do share that kind of detail.

That's because they can't do much with this info since they aren't also a giant ad network. Now imagine the same data in the hands of a company which has built one. They should probably start charging more :-)

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