Other than bits already mentioned by others, the data they gather from your card payments is not theirs to sell. Yes, they can connect your card to receipts and know what you buy, when, where etc - but officially, they're not meant to keep/process/sell that data.
If you get a "Tesco Clubcard" or whatever, you formally agree to any and all data gathering, and Tesco own that data and can do what they want with it.
Can’t they just track everything you buy using your payment card?
That's why.
They can use them for all sorts of tracking and pair the data up with any data that they buy from other places. Also, many 'loyalty' cards - e.g. Tesco's one, only works really against the consumer as the customer is penalised for not having it. The prices only drop to normal prices when the card is used, with the higher price for those without a card.
Hands up, I haven't watched this video, but I guess it will explain better than anything I can - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psta0qkwk7M
It's more than that.
The original purpose of loyalty cards, or at least the purpose that is commonly known, is customer retention. Clubcard is a perfect example of this. To earn clubcard points, you need to spend money at Tesco, to get certain discounts, you need a clubcard. Customer data is one thing, but customer retention is another.
These days I think it's so they can retain price sensitive consumers (cheap and/or poor people), while making the maximum profit from price insensitive consumers (dumb and/or rich people) who wont bother to use one so will pay full price.
In the states the company running the payment system (Visa, Mastercard etc) is a separate company than the supermarket and so they can’t necessarily group together all the purchases a single customer makes, let alone if they pay cash
Imagine a taxi driver, he might overhear your name and the address you’re going to, but that doesn’t mean he can go look up every taxi trip you took,
Now if you have a loyalty card there’s a single identity to group and market towards
Now take this all with a grain of salt, your system may be different, but the technique spread across markets
Correct me if I’m wrong but Apple Pay, (not sure about Android Offerings), randomises the card number on every purchase.
This makes it difficult for companies to track you hence why they want you to scan the loyalty card.
I’ve been using my parents’ and colleagues’ loyalty cards instead. While I don’t get the points I do get the discount.
Purchase information track, contact information as they requested address, phone, email, but didn't verify in most cases. This could be used for targeted marketing or just mailing flyers.
There’s basically a psychological value in making you jump through hoops with a loyalty card to get the discount, otherwise they may as well just cut out the whole charade and just make the products slightly cheaper instead.
Might be in the title. Loyalty....
It's pretty simple. You get store credits based on how much you spend each visit, thus encouraging a higher spend each visit. Since each visit costs the store money in staffing, aircon etc, they want to maximise the spending of high value customers.
Credit card doesn't give them your phone number and possibly email. Also they use loyalty system to post normal prices. So they can still charge higher prices to everyone who forgets or doesn't use the loyalty cards.
Same reason they started doing digital coupon bullshit that needs to be scanned.
As well. As data collected from your phone via their app
in the us there was a service which did this but it never took off.
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