[dx034]

That's true and credit card companies are very open about it (at least if you read their reports for investors). The advantage of store cards is that the store knows exactly which products you bought, whereas they only know the total if you used a Mastercard/Visa.

[libertyEQ]

>whereas they only know the total if you used a Mastercard/Visa

This is simply not true with respect to the big retailers in the US. This started as far back as '06, though the details of the implementation have changed a bit.

[dx034]

Only if it's a co-branded card. If you use your Visa issued by some bank to go shopping at Walmart, they won't get your personal details together with all items you bought. They can get the items but without the personal details (including age, wealth, etc), they're not that useful.

[libertyEQ]

We had the ability to do this at the largest merchant acquirer 10 years ago as long as your bank signed up. Walmart was one of the first customers and would stream SKU-level data straight to our servers from the POS terminal.