Google to track credit card purchases in physical stores

A woman holds her smart phone, which displays the Google home page, in this picture illustration taken February 24, 2016. Reuters/Eric Gaillard

Google has announced a new system that can track credit card purchases made offline. The tech giant, which can already track online shopping, declared that it will launch a tool designed to monitor how much money people spend in merchants’ brick-and-mortar stores.

The combined ad clicks of individuals logged into Google services will be matched to perform the analysis. Ponemon Institute privacy research firm chairman Larry Ponemon said that aggregated data can be translated to data that can identify users.

Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy assured that “incredibly smart people” were consulted in creating the system, which he described it as “secure and privacy safe.” The internet company said it has access to around 70 percent of US credit and debit card sales via its partnerships with companies that monitor data. It is unclear how much access Google has to Australians’ credit card details.

It clarified it would not be able to examine specific items people are purchasing or how much a specific individual spends. What Google can do is automatically alert merchants when their digital ads convert into sales at a brick-and-mortar store.

Previously, an advertiser may conclude that an ad is a waste of money when people click on it without buying. Therefore, the program can possibly influence merchants to further their digital marketing budgets.

Ponemon recognised that Google has good intentions but pointed out that companies and governments in the future might not. Miro Copic, a marketing professor at San Diego State University, also expressed concern over the new tracking device’s safety, saying the kinds of data Google collects might be targeted by hackers.

“The privacy implications of this are pretty massive, so Google needs to tread very carefully,” news.com.au quotes Copic as saying. Meanwhile, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Washington Post that what he found fascinating was that while companies become ever more intrusive as far as data collection is concerned, they also become more “secretive.”

Google already has the ability to determine what their users like through searches they make as well as videos they watch. Online advertisements are targeted to those interests. The new program carries tracking into offline stores, with the company explaining that its computers largely depend on login information like email addresses spot people clicking on ads. For other Google related news, watch video below.

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