This CNNMoney story makes it sound great, almost as if the banking industry wrote the story. The spin is that it's like Groupon, only better because they help by automatically tailoring your discount coupons to where you shop. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I'd rather not have my bank shopping around my private details in any way, shape or form.
Unless someone specifically signs up for something like this, it should be considered theft. Let the banks make money some other way because profiteering from private data is simply wrong. But don't count on the gutless Congress to lift a finger on this one. They have campaign contributions to raise, after all.
Many of the nation's leading banks and card issuers, including Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), Citi (C, Fortune 500), USAA, Sovereign Bank and Discover (DFS, Fortune 500), are selling information about consumers' shopping habits -- how much they spend, where they shop and what they buy -- to retailers, which are using the data to offer targeted discounts via text, email and online bank statements. Each time a consumer cashes in on one of those deals, the retailer pays the bank a nice commission.Maybe the journalist who wrote this can ask why the regulations are there instead of apologizing to the industry. This smells like a banking industry planted story.
At a time when government regulation is forcing banks to hike fees and eliminate consumers perks, selling consumers' shopping data is an easy way to not only generate a decent chunk of revenue but also to drum up some much-needed customer loyalty.
Aite Group, an independent Boston-based research firm specializing in financial services, forecasts that these merchant-funded incentives will drive $1.7 billion in annual revenue for card issuers by 2015.
