You’ll Never Guess Who’s Mining Facebook Data

MasterCard has agreed to a 2-year-contract to mine user data from Facebook Asia-Pacific, packaging it and then reselling it to banks.

“MasterCard aims to feed the data along with information from other sources into an analytics platform dubbed the Priceless Engine, and work with Australian banks, starting in early 2015, to serve up tailored online offers for MasterCard customers and boost online sales,” reported Payments Cards And Mobile. “MasterCard hasn’t disclosed how much it will charge the banks for the service, only that they will be offered in four or nine-month campaigns. Eighteen Asia-Pacific banks are working with MasterCard on the initiative which had a test run in Australia this week.”

MasterCard said the Priceless Engine “will see MasterCard leverage its depth of analytic capabilities to help its partner banks understand consumer sentiment and trends based on social conversations; track engagement and transactions on campaigns to translate these findings into meaningful feedback; create and share content across borders to increase scale; and finally analyze data in real-time,” according to a MasterCard statement. “The robustness of the four part process comes from the fact that it allows the team to identify and address barriers, or make adjustments in real-time.”