Warehouse Data Earns Its Keep

MasterCard offers bank clients access to these tools, as well as custom reports, over the MasterCard Online portal. "We package our technology and our intelligence into the tools," says Sam Alkhalaf, senior vice president of technology and strategic architecture at MasterCard's IT organization, based in St. Louis.

Financial institutions count on these credit-card transactions to tell a story, which provides information for targeted marketing or business planning. For example, a bank issuing credit cards might notice that many cardholders use their MasterCard accounts to charge flights on a specific airline. The bank then can strike a deal with the airline to offer special offers and incentives to cardholders.

Mining Tools

Although it's not pure data mining--MasterCard stresses that it adds human intelligence to the mix by having in-house analysts review the data--Alkhalaf describes the process as a form of data mining. Each tool reports, extracts and summarizes the information it plucks from the data warehouse.

"It's a way we can observe cubes of data and drill down into them," he says. "The actual magic comes from our statistical analysis team, which figures out trends based on what's gleaned from the information."