Mastercard Debuts COVID-Recovery Data Tools For Business, Gov’t

Mastercard‘s new Recovery Insights tool will attempt to help businesses and governments assess data during the pandemic in order to make smarter decisions, according to a press release.

The tool will attempt to help an array of businesses, including airlines, restaurants, banks, governments and other types of money-making and governing entities, said Mastercard President of Data and Services Raj Seshadri.

“Enabling smarter decisions with better outcomes is our goal,” Seshadri said in the release, adding that the insights would attempt to provide functions like “helping apparel brands refine their inventory to address the rise in eCommerce, grocers fine-tune store hours to give at-risk shoppers peace of mind, and governments guide services to fuel local economies.”

The initiative will make some of Mastercard’s insight tools available for free to entities that need them. The release states the tools make use of aggregated and anonymized data from a large pool of information in order to give the best possible picture of financial health.

The tools are being used by cities worldwide, including New York City, London, Madrid, Los Angeles, Barcelona and Logan City (in Australia), as well as in the state of Arizona and by national governments, the release states. For those types of entities, the tools will aim to inform budget planning, help make aid disbursement more efficient, show which stores are open and allot financial aid for those hit the hardest by the pandemic.

For small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the tools offer ways to see spending trends so they can stay on top of changes during the financial rockiness of the pandemic, the release states.

The American economy has been thrown into turmoil due to the pandemic, with millions of workers now unemployed. Reopening efforts have been planned or put into effect across the country, but the economy has not yet begun rebounding thus far.