CenterCheck Ushers In a New Age Of Transaction-Based Retail Analytics

Feb 25, 2025 • 15 min read

CenterCheck Ushers In a New Age Of Transaction-Based Retail Analytics

In a shifting cashless society where 70% of all U.S. transactions are made via credit or debit cards, CenterCheck has built the most comprehensive, high-frequency, and statistically reliable retail data platform in the U.S. by leveraging anonymized card transaction data at scale.

The traditional models—government surveys, merchant-reported sales, or self-reported consumer spending—come with time lags, incomplete data, and heavy reliance on estimation. CenterCheck’s approach is different. By capturing actual consumer spending from 70% of all card-based transactions in the U.S., CenterCheck’s analytics provide a real-time, store-level, and category-wide view of retail performance unmatched by any other source.

The Shift to a Cashless Economy: Why Transaction Data is the Future of Retail Analytics

For decades, retail analysts relied on a mix of Census Bureau retail reports, store foot traffic studies, and merchant-reported sales to gauge economic activity. But as America moves rapidly toward a cashless economy, older measurement tools are becoming less reliable.

A 2024 Federal Reserve study found that credit and debit cards now account for over 60% of all payments in the U.S., while cash usage has fallen below 16%—a dramatic shift from just a decade ago. Additionally, card transactions account for 84% of the growth in all non-cash payments since 2018, meaning retail’s trajectory is now largely defined by electronic payment data.

This shift is why CenterCheck’s methodology is uniquely positioned to provide the most statistically significant insights into U.S. retail trends. With access to billions of anonymized transactions, CenterCheck captures the full scope of consumer activity in near real-time, without the estimation errors of traditional models.

Timely Retail Sales Tracking From Card Transaction Data

Can transaction data truly reflect the broader U.S. retail economy? The answer, based on multiple independent studies, is a resounding yes.

In Spain, BBVA researchers found that card transaction data closely mirrored the country’s official Retail Trade Index, capturing both national and regional trends with near-identical precision. Similarly, Mastercard’s SpendingPulse reports, which estimate total retail sales using credit card data, have consistently matched U.S. Census retail reports—often publishing their estimates weeks ahead of official government data.

CenterCheck’s approach—using aggregated credit/debit transaction data—produces results that are as accurate as government statistics, but with greater speed and granularity. Competitive Benchmarking: Measuring Sales Performance at a Store and Market Level

One of the most powerful applications of CenterCheck’s platform is its ability to benchmark retailers against competitors at a granular level.

• Real estate developers use CenterCheck’s data to assess how different shopping centers and retail corridors perform.
• Retailers use it to track store-level revenue growth vs. industry averages.
• Investors analyze sector-wide trends, spotting shifts in consumer spending habits ahead of earnings reports.

Unlike broad government reports that only provide total retail sales, CenterCheck drills down into performance at the store and city level. Want to know how a specific shopping center is performing? How one coffee chain stacks up against another in revenue per store? CenterCheck can provide those answers with unprecedented detail. Growing Accuracy via Modern Payments

The fundamental shift to cashless payments has made credit and debit card data substantially more representative of the sales history of physical businesses, resulting in a reliability that will only increase over time.

CenterCheck’s methodology incorporates billions of anonymized transactions covering over 70% of all card-based consumer spending, into a simple top use interface. 

Savvy retailers, real estate investors, brokerages and economic analysts alike are making use of CenterCheck’s next generation insights. In a rapidly changing consumer economy, those who rely on outdated, slow-moving data risk falling behind.