Google and Mastercard reported to secretly ink deal to track retail purchases

Google and Mastercard have entered into an unannounced partnership that enables the former to track the ads that led to retail sales, an article by Bloomberg said. According to the article, this partnership gave Google “unprecedented” asset for measuring retail spending through a paid pile of Mastercard transactions in a bid to strengthen its business against competitors such as Amazon and many others.However, a spokesperson from Mastercard said in the article that the credit card company “shares transaction trends” with its merchants and service providers, for measuring effectiveness of the ad campaigns. The information shared in limited to sales volume and size of purchase, excluding individual transaction and/or personal data, the article added.A spokersperson from Google said the company has an double-blind encryption technology preventing its partners from “viewing” users’ personal information and users have the option to opt our of ad tracking.Marketing has contacted Google and Mastercard for more information.