Transaction Data Has a New Job: Telling You Where to Eat
Mary Wisniewski
Head of Content
It’s happening. Zest, a startup that recently launched to the public, is asking users for their credit card transaction data by way of Plaid to log their meals. In exchange, the app spits out restaurant recommendations and plots out the places where someone has eaten on a map. It compares itself "spiritually" to Foursquare but without the check-in. In the app’s iOS description: “Stop eating at the ‘trendy places.’ Find the places you’ll actually love.”
The launch is the latest evidence of outsiders finding new applications for data the bank already has and leans into a word that has caught on with Silicon Valley in an AI age: taste.
Zest works like so: The app mines restaurant, bar and cafe purchase data and pairs that intel with input from TikTok, Reddit and other reviews to suggest new places to try. Like Venmo, it offers users social nosiness by letting them follow their friends’ dining habits as well as creator-curated ones. That’s an especially useful feature if seeking new spots when traveling. In mid-June, the startup told TechCrunch it has logged more than 100,000 visits within a “matter of weeks.”
We have all seen the ways fintech companies grab transaction data to help someone create a budget or pay back a friend – look to the OpenAI and Plaid deal as the splashiest expression of it in recent weeks. Now, we’re seeing transaction data used by developers outside of tried-and-true financial reasons.
With Zest, one striking element here is that purchase data reveals someone’s preferences in a way that written reviews do not: The transaction is proof they went there. It also highlights something perking up in the industry: Adding more details to transactions (i.e. maps, receipts, SKU-level data) so that someone can remember what occurred. The experience seems akin to a digital diary of where you’ve broken bread and the company is betting on a question that matters to banks: does purchase data reveal something about who customers are that isn’t tied to underwriting, fraud or financial goals? To Zest, the answer is yes.
While banks have offered merchant-funded rewards, which involves crunching transaction data to offer relevant discounts, they remain just a transaction. Following each other’s cashback offers for guidance would be like reading bank disclosures over dinner.
To be sure, the idea has bombed before. According to TechCrunch, Blippy launched in private beta in 2009 to let people share their purchases with friends. It didn’t last. Not so many consumers consistently publicized what they bought, and worse, a couple of its users’ credit card data was exposed in Google Search results.
Zest has applied some of the lessons learned from the flop. It doesn’t share amounts or what someone bought, and importantly, it’s only pulling a slice of the credit card data – food and drink transactions. It’s betting that this type of transaction data is something people are happy to share. For certain people, like the foodies who think where you eat says something about who you are, it only makes sense that they would want to flaunt that kind of currency. Heck, people go on foodcations where they take trips primarily because of the food.
Certainly, Amazon has proved how purchase history provides evidence of who needs what next. And broader applications of using financial data have precedent. Consider Score, a dating app that asks individuals to share their credit scores, using the metric as a filter for verified users who pay a monthly subscription. The idea of doing so, according to the startup, is that how you manage money says something about who you are as a partner.
It’s easy to see what could make Zest strike out, including how many people want to share their restaurant data with a startup. But whether it succeeds or flames out, the emergence of Zest says something important. Transaction data is showing up in dating apps, restaurant guides and in AI assistants; experiences banks did not build. While banks have had the data the longest, outsiders are finding more imaginative reasons for mining it.
