Google ‘had a deal with Mastercard to track shopping habits’

Google holds a secretive deal with Mastercard that enables it to track whether the adverts it shows people online lead to purchases in high street shops, a new report claims.

The purported multi-million dollar agreement allows the Californian search company to link the purchases of Mastercard customers to their email addresses.

These addresses are used to identify customers’ online activity – and track the adverts they have seen on webpages and inside mobile apps.

Google uses this information to determine whether the adverts successfully influenced their shopping habits in the real-world.  

Neither Google nor Mastercard publicly confirmed the partnership, and both companies failed to warn customers their in-store purchases would be linked to their activity online, the report states.

Google has a secretive deal with Mastercard that lets it track whether the online adverts it shows to people lead to purchases in high street shops. The agreement allows the search giant to link the purchase histories of Mastercard customers to their email addresses (stock image)

The deal took four years to negotiate, and has been active for the last 12 months, claims Bloomberg, citing a number of unnamed sources.

The data Google collected as part of the partnership allowed it to design a tool for advertisers that broke down whether people who clicked on an advert online later went on to purchase the advertised product inside a brick-and-mortar store.

Both Google and Bloomberg say the data is anonymised, meaning purchase histories cannot be linked back and used to personally identifiable information, including your billing address, name, age, or other details held by the two companies.

The tool tracks Google account holders, which automatically includes anyone with a Gmail or YouTube account, who are also one of 2 billion Mastercard holders worldwide.

Google allows people to set-up an account using third-party email providers, including Hotmail, Outlook and iCloud. It’s unclear if these account holders are impacted by the multi-million dollar Mastercard deal.

When a Google user clicks on an online advert, the technology giant logs this activity in a database, even if the users does not purchase the item.

Under the new deal, if that person uses their Mastercard to purchase the item at a physical store within 30 days, Google sends a report to the advertiser.

In the report, transactions made in-store are filed under a column labelled ‘Offline Revenue’, according to Bloomberg.

Google is also able to track purchases shoppers make at high street trailers when they provide a Gmail email address at the cash register, to use for an electronic receipt, for example.

For consumers who don’t provide an email address, the company relies on third-party companies, like Mastercard, that process card transaction data.

These include payment processors – businesses hired by merchants to handle transactions from debit and credit cards.

Google declined to comment on the alleged partnership, focusing instead on advertising tools it launched in 2017.

‘Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users’ personally identifiable information,’ a Google spokesperson told MailOnline.

Neither Google nor Mastercard publicly announced the partnership, and both companies failed to warn customers that their in-store purchases were being linked to their activity online (stock image)

Neither Google nor Mastercard publicly announced the partnership, and both companies failed to warn customers that their in-store purchases were being linked to their activity online (stock image)

‘We do not have access to any personal information from our partners’ credit and debit cards, nor do we share any personal information with our partners.’

It added that people can opt out of the program using Google’s ‘Web and App Activity’ controls.

The setting is enabled by default, and controls whether Google can link your browsing history to your GPS location.

HOW CAN GOOGLE LINK WHAT YOU BUY OFFLINE TO YOUR ONLINE ACTIVITY? 

Google has a number of ways to link purchases you make in physical stores to your online activity.

The company constantly tracks what you click on if you have a Google account – which includes anyone with a YouTube or Gmail account.

If you provide a Google email address when you purchase something in-store, the merchant will let Google know if it has a partnership with the firm.

Google also has deals with several third-party companies that process card transaction data.

These include payment processors – businesses hired by merchants to handle transactions from debit and credit cards.

This means that even if a store doesn’t have a partnership with Google, other groups who view or process its card transactions may pass customer information on to the search giant.

A Mastercard spokesperson said purchased items are never linked to personally identifiable information, including billing addresses, or account numbers.

‘The way our network operates, we do not know the individual items that a consumer purchases in any shopping cart – physical or digital,’ they said.

‘No individual transaction or personal data is provided.

‘That delivers on the expectation of privacy from both consumers and merchants around the world.

‘In processing a transaction, we see the retailer’s name and the total amount of the consumer’s purchase, but not specific items.’

MailOnline has approached the company for further comment.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk