Dive Brief:
- Card network behemoth Visa has partnered with a global market research firm, Analytic Partners, to aid its merchant clients in “improving the return on advertising investments,” the companies said in a press release Wednesday.
- The partnership will use artificial intelligence as part of data analysis services aimed at delivering more insights to retailers and other merchants, on a nearly real-time basis, the companies said in the release. At first, they’ll make the services available only to merchants in the U.S., but eventually they plan to offer them in other countries as well, they said.
- “The partnership will combine Visa’s merchant relationships and consumer spend insights with Analytic Partners’ commercial decisioning platform to bring powerful marketing spend optimization analytics to merchants and brands around the world,” the release said.
Dive Insight:
As the largest U.S. debit and credit card network, and one of the biggest in the world, San Francisco-based Visa can tap an extraordinary amount of card and consumer transaction data that flows through its network. The company noted that merchants sometimes have difficulty parsing that card data.
“The volume of data available to merchants can be overwhelming, and if they don’t get it just right, it’s a missed opportunity for growth,” Visa’s global head of merchant sales and acquiring, Jeni Mundy, said in the release.
A Visa spokesperson declined to comment on questions about the length of the contract, or how the revenue will be split between the two companies.
The network and Miami-based Analytic Partners noted in the release that they has entered into “certain exclusivity commitments for merchant and brand marketing spend optimization offerings and services.” No further details were disclosed.
“We view this partnership as a continuation of Visa expanding beyond its role in payments and leveraging its vast data to enable unique value-added services,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Daniel Perlin said in a note to investment clients on Wednesday.
