Btw, my pal has no idea I posted this and my comments are unrelated to his product. Thanks for the feedback. Also, Waze is pretty cool. My wife loves it.I highly doubt your banks are monetizing your transactions at this point.
Most people assume that Visa and MC have the data for all their card products, but as you know it's the issuing banks which have this data. Furthermore, there are thousands of credit card processing companies out there, making the data available even more watered down. The only card issuer that controls both the cards issued and collects the data from the processing side is Amex. They absolutely leverage this aggregate data to merchants for marketing purposes and refer to it as a "closed loop." The larger card issuers on the V/MC side also sell their aggregate data. So, it's not absurd to think that your spending behavior is for sale. It is.