In partnership with
Most Eye-Popping Quote of the Show:
We basically have visibility into a billion cards transacting in the US. And we have identity, Mapping intelligence, and therefore our insights, which of course are very compliant, aggregated, and de-identified, are very robust. We're not trying to model based on a small sample and then pretending that small sample can be significant. We actually really try to derive the signals from factual customer purchasing behavior, and that has been pretty exciting. - Florencia Ardissone, Managing Director, JPMorgan Payments
What’s it all about? My Take
Payments Data Ranks as One of the Most Important Signals
Every card payment leaves a record: amount, time, merchant, location, channel (online or in store), card type, and whether it was approved. JPMorgan's Customer Insights product turns those records into analytics: Payments Intelligence.
The data source is all credit and debit card transactions processed by Chase Payment Solutions, shown in aggregated, anonymized form.
It covers sales trends, new vs. repeat customers, top zip codes and demographics, purchase timing and channel, and benchmarks against similar businesses. The bank also has access to proprietary insights from Chase-issued card transactions.
Three insights about payments intelligence
Why and Who Cares?
Every card payment leaves a record: the amount, the time, the merchant, the location, and whether it happened online or in store. One record means little. Combined across millions of payments, with personal details removed, those records show how customers actually behave. Payments data records what was spent, who came back, and through which channel. Three insights follow from that.
Data Points Used by Leading Retailers:
1. Repeat rate: How many customers come back.
Repeat rate is the share of customers who buy from a business more than once. Picture a coffee shop where a hundred people come in this month and forty of them were also there last month. Its repeat rate is forty percent. Payments data shows this because the same card returns over time, so a business doesn't have to guess or rely on surveys. It matters because a business that grows only by adding new customers is spending to replace the ones it lost. A high repeat rate means the growth is staying.
2. Customer Lifetime value against what it cost to win the customer.
Customer lifetime value is the total a customer spends with a business over the whole relationship. Acquisition cost is what the business paid to win that customer, through advertising, promotions, or sales effort. Payments data supplies the first half by showing how spending builds visit by visit, and the cost side comes from marketing records. Together they answer weather the business is making money on the customers it wins. A customer who costs $50 to win and spends $40 once is a loss. One who spends $40 every month is the goal.
3. Cross-channel shoppers: Customers who buy in more than one place.
Cross-channel purchasing may occur in a store, a website, an app, or a marketplace. Payments data records whether each payment was online or in person, so it can show which customers use both and how their spending compares with customers who use only one. It matters because many companies run stores and websites as separate teams with separate budgets. If the customers who use both are the most valuable, treating the channels as rivals works against the business.
Notable: Payments data sees cards, not people, so these are patterns across groups of customers, not a view of any one person.
JPMorgan Payments Insights: A Timeline. 2020 was the turning point.
1997 to 2008: Chase Paymentech began as a 1997 joint venture between Chase Merchant Services and First Data. The venture ended in 2008, and Chase Paymentech became JPMorgan's wholly owned merchant services subsidiary.
About 2018: Cloud and digital transformation period began, according to the conversation with Ardissone.
2020: In June 2020, we see a first position article by Tony Wimmer of JP Morgan Chase published on the website. He describes them as being two-fold: for growth and efficiency.
2022: The division was rebranded to Chase Payment Solutions (and Chase Merchant Services) to better highlight its expanded line of point-of-sale, mobile, and e-commerce offerings..
October 2024: it expanded at no extra cost to Chase business checking accounts, reaching nearly five million small business owners.
June 2026: it expanded again, to all Chase small business credit card customers
What Just Happened: The Technology, Strategy and People Powering Business.
Ad Placement:
The best influencer marketing advice never comes from a report
Think about the last thing that got you fired up about your job this year. Odds are it didn't come from a report. It came from someone who does the job, saying what happened when they tried it.
So we've filled a day with people like that.
Maya Shaff, ŌURA. Leah Walker, Adobe. Georgia Humphries, Stanley 1913. Enara Roy, Halfday. Tyler Vaught, Edelman. Josh Rangel, Ogilvy. Sarah Whittle, ex-Crocs and Duolingo.
And that's just the first wave of speakers.
Return on Influence Festival '26 is a free, virtual day dedicated to influencer marketing. Like any good festival, there are stages. But no mud, no queues, and absolutely no porta-potties.
Sign up today, and the rest of the lineup lands in your inbox first.