MasterCard and IBM partner to make big data work for smaller businesses

New partnership provides easy access to actionable market intelligence for merchants

IBM and MasterCard have announced their partnership to offer smaller merchants real-time, analytics-based market insights on revenue, market share, customer demographics and competitors in a particular location and across multiple locations. 

The solution integrates IBM Watson Analytics with insights based on aggregated and anonymised MasterCard transaction data through MasterCard Advisors Local Market Intelligence (LMI).

According to MasterCard’s latest research, more than 7 out of 10 smaller businesses in Asia Pacific expect higher business costs in 2016. With this enhanced analytical platform powered by MasterCard Advisors and IBM, merchants will hence be better equipped to make informed decisions that lower costs based on a deeper knowledge of their business’ financial strengths and pitfalls.

Starting mid-2016, merchants who accept MasterCard will be able to access this new offering upon subscription.

MasterCard Advisors Senior Vice President Eric Schneider said, “There is an increasing wealth of data today that merchants can leverage to better understand their market and consumers. However, smaller merchants often don’t have the resources to maximise the insights. That’s the value of this platform turning Big Data into smarter data that is easily accessible and actionable.” “We are thrilled to be working hand in hand with MasterCard to help smaller merchants understand their business and competition better, and increase the strength and value of their customer relationships,” said IBM ASEAN Financial Services Sector Leader Yashesh Kampani. “Through this new service, merchants will discover just how easy leveraging Big Data can actually be with the analytical tools that IBM and MasterCard are making available.”

MasterCard Advisors’ LMI provides insights that help to drive some of the most important decisions a business can make about operations, marketing and personnel. It focuses on three key areas: business performance; customer behaviour; and competitive standing.

The IBM Watson Analytics data discovery tool is designed to deliver cloud-based guided analytics, data visualisation and predictive analytics without complexity. With its natural language-based cognitive abilities, Watson Analytics recommends starting points for the user to follow based on his questions and automatically serves up insights and visualisations that enable the user to discover new patterns in their data such as customer buying and behaviour trends, untapped campaign opportunities, and more.