“If you’re someone who’s buying products on the web, we know who is buying the products where, and we can leverage the data,” Grether said in a statement to the WSJ. He also said that PayPal will receive shopping data from customers using its credit card in stores.
A PayPal spokesperson tells the WSJ that the company will collect data from customers by default while also offering the ability to opt out.
PayPal is far from the only company to sell ads based on transaction information. In January, a study from Consumer Reports revealed that Facebook gets information about users from thousands of different companies, including retailers like Walmart and Amazon. JPMorgan Chase also announced that it’s creating an ad network based on customer spending data, while Visa is making similar moves. Of course, this doesn’t include the tracking shopping apps do to log your offline purchases, too.
Wasn’t the EU working on some digital Euro? I know it wouldn’t help Americans at first but maybe create enough pressure for others to follow.
I kind of wouldn’t want a government spying on me with this either, but it would be somewhat of an improvement over both the government and companies spying on me with it.
Been keeping my eye on these guys hoping they can turn the tide: Taler