Data is the new Money.

 Major credit card companies have a lot to answer for themselves,  lots of predatory practices to speak of, including imposing high and unreasonable late fees, and even imposing them when the customers are not even late, and also use obscure contract loopholes to charge higher interest while manipulating calculation indexes.
 

 But today I want to focus on one in particular, the marketplace for data used to make focused advertising campaign. Remember how when you search for a phrase like “vacation” or even talk to your friends about a recent vacation, and suddenly an ad for a cruise to norway appears on your favorite site? That is a somewhat crude example of what big data can achieve, and the more data points a company has, the more complete a “profile” of you is, and the more sophisticated an ad could be.
 

 In the case of said vacation, the working assumption is that the decision to take a vacation often has an element of spontaneity to it, so the ad hopes to capture this moment of readiness to spend, with some exciting offer or another.
 

 As the name “market place” suggests, this data is being traded around between companies, an assumption is also made that people are creatures of habit, and at least some of their future behaviour could be deduced by looking at the past. Obviously the holy grail is the actual spending, including long term commitments and installments, which is held by, you guessed it - credit card companies.
 

 I believe that this kind of trading should be stopped, or at least limited somehow (mainly by decisions of the users themselves opting for more privacy in their payment methods), but until this happens, I could also see the opportunities and choices (even benefits) that could come about by sharing your data responsibly for consumer benefits or even some sort of monetary compensation.
 

 I know of a project which intends to do just that. Rubiix already has an app running of a user community that chose to have their data accumulated,anonymised and receive money for being part of, and being exposed to, ad campaign. It is now in pilot stages with over 10k users based in the US, with plans for global reach and a blockchain powered reward system,the most developed and one of the firsts of its kind.

 I am keeping my eye out for development in this space, especially after facebook, in spite of mountains of data collected, have seen ad engagement not hitting expected targets, the approach here is different. Finding willing participants for positive and rewarding engagement with brands is -somewhat ironically, a new and refreshing approach to doing business.