Fiserv Introduces Unknown Shopper to Transform In-Store Payment Data into Actionable Customer Intelligence
Fiserv, Inc. a global leader in payments and financial services technology, has announced the launch of Unknown Shopper from Fiserv, a new analytics-driven capability designed to help merchants and marketing partners gain deeper insight into in-store customer behavior by unlocking the value of card-present transaction data. As consumer expectations for personalized experiences continue to rise, merchants operating in physical environments such as retail stores, restaurants, and fuel locations have historically faced challenges in understanding who their customers are beyond loyalty programs. Unknown Shopper addresses this long-standing visibility gap by transforming anonymized in-store payment activity into meaningful, actionable insights that enable more relevant engagement, improved marketing effectiveness, and stronger customer experiences.
The Growing Importance of In-Store Customer Intelligence in a Digital-First Economy
The modern commerce landscape has been reshaped by digital-first experiences, data-driven marketing, and real-time personalization, leaving many brick-and-mortar businesses struggling to keep pace with the level of insight available in e-commerce environments. While online transactions provide rich behavioral data that can be easily tracked, analyzed, and segmented, in-store transactions have traditionally remained opaque, especially when customers do not participate in loyalty programs or identify themselves during checkout. This imbalance has created a significant blind spot for merchants who rely heavily on physical locations for revenue but lack the tools to fully understand and activate their in-store audiences. Unknown Shopper from Fiserv emerges as a strategic response to this challenge by enabling merchants to access deeper intelligence from card-present transactions and bring in-store analytics closer to the sophistication of digital commerce.
Addressing the Long-Standing Limitations of Card-Present Transactions
In traditional card-present environments, transaction data typically provides limited information beyond the amount, location, and payment method, leaving merchants with little insight into customer behavior, preferences, or purchasing patterns unless the transaction is connected to a loyalty or membership program. As a result, a substantial portion of in-store activity remains underutilized, difficult to analyze, and nearly impossible to activate for marketing or customer engagement purposes. Unknown Shopper directly addresses this limitation by enriching anonymized payment data with demographic and behavioral insights, allowing merchants to better understand who is shopping in their stores, how often they visit, and what they purchase over time, without requiring customers to enroll in loyalty programs or share personal information at the point of sale.
How Unknown Shopper Unlocks Value from In-Store Payment Data
Built on Fiserv’s advanced payments intelligence platform and informed by billions of historical transactions, Unknown Shopper converts raw in-store payment data into structured insights that merchants and their marketing partners can use to drive measurable business outcomes. By analyzing card-present transactions at scale, the solution identifies patterns in purchasing behavior and translates them into actionable customer segments based on real-world spending activity rather than assumptions or inferred interests. This approach allows merchants to move beyond surface-level metrics and gain a more accurate understanding of how different customer segments interact with their brand across physical locations.
Bridging the Gap Between In-Store and Digital Customer Experiences
One of the most significant advantages of Unknown Shopper is its ability to help merchants build a more unified view of customer behavior across in-store and digital channels at the segment level. While individual customer identification may not always be possible, the solution enables businesses to analyze aggregated behavior patterns that reveal how in-store purchasing aligns with digital engagement, marketing campaigns, and broader customer journeys. This unified perspective allows merchants to make more informed decisions about product assortment, promotional strategies, and customer engagement initiatives, ensuring that in-store experiences are aligned with digital expectations.
Moving Beyond Inferred Demographics to Real Purchase Behavior
Traditional marketing approaches often rely on inferred demographics or third-party data to predict customer preferences, which can result in inaccurate targeting and wasted marketing spend. Unknown Shopper shifts this paradigm by enabling merchants to build customer segments based on actual spending behavior observed through in-store transactions. By focusing on what customers truly buy rather than who marketers assume they are, businesses can create more precise segments that reflect real purchasing intent, frequency, and value. This behavioral-based segmentation empowers merchants to design campaigns and offers that resonate more strongly with customers, leading to higher engagement and improved conversion rates.
Delivering More Relevant Engagement to Non-Loyalty Customers
A major challenge for merchants without widespread loyalty program adoption is engaging the large portion of customers who transact anonymously in-store. Unknown Shopper addresses this challenge by enabling businesses to deliver more relevant offers and experiences to non-loyalty customers through segment-level insights and marketing activation. With a better understanding of how different customer segments behave, merchants and their marketing partners can design targeted campaigns that reach the right audiences with the right messages, even when individual customer identities are unknown. This capability helps merchants extend personalized engagement beyond loyalty members and unlock value from the full spectrum of in-store shoppers.
Improving Campaign Measurement and Marketing Attribution
Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in physical environments has long been a challenge for merchants, particularly when it comes to attributing in-store purchases to specific marketing efforts. Unknown Shopper helps improve campaign measurement by linking aggregated transaction data to marketing initiatives, enabling merchants to assess which campaigns drive incremental in-store sales and which channels deliver the highest return on investment. By providing regularly refreshed insights and stronger attribution capabilities, the solution helps reduce media waste, optimize marketing spend, and support more data-driven decision-making across marketing teams and agencies.
Supporting Retail, Restaurant, and Fuel Merchants with Industry-Specific Insights
Unknown Shopper is designed to serve merchants across retail, restaurant, and fuel environments, industries where card-present transactions play a critical role and customer insight has historically been limited. In retail, the solution can help merchants understand shopping frequency, category preferences, and cross-shopping behavior across locations. In restaurant environments, it can reveal dining patterns, visit cadence, and spending trends that inform menu design and promotional strategies. For fuel merchants, Unknown Shopper offers insight into convenience store purchases, visit timing, and customer segments that support targeted promotions and improved customer experiences. By tailoring insights to the unique dynamics of each industry, Fiserv enables merchants to apply analytics in ways that directly support their operational and marketing goals.
Leveraging Fiserv’s Payments Intelligence Platform at Scale
The power of Unknown Shopper is rooted in Fiserv’s extensive payments intelligence platform, which processes billions of transactions annually and provides a robust foundation for analytics and insight generation. By leveraging this scale, the solution delivers insights that are both comprehensive and reliable, enabling merchants to make confident decisions based on a broad view of customer behavior. The platform’s ability to continuously analyze and refresh data ensures that insights remain relevant as consumer preferences and market conditions evolve, supporting long-term strategic planning as well as near-term marketing execution.
Enhancing Collaboration Between Merchants and Marketing Partners
Unknown Shopper is designed not only for merchants but also for their marketing partners, including agencies and technology providers that play a key role in campaign design and execution. By providing a shared source of truth for in-store customer insights, the solution enhances collaboration and alignment between merchants and their partners, enabling more effective planning, targeting, and measurement. Marketing partners can use Unknown Shopper insights to refine audience strategies, optimize media placement, and demonstrate the impact of campaigns on real-world sales, strengthening their value proposition to merchant clients.
Advancing Customer Experiences Through Data-Driven Decision Making
At its core, Unknown Shopper is about empowering merchants to serve their customers more effectively by making data-driven decisions that enhance the overall customer experience. With deeper insight into purchasing behavior and preferences, merchants can tailor product offerings, optimize store layouts, and design promotions that better meet customer needs. These improvements not only drive revenue growth but also contribute to stronger customer satisfaction and loyalty over time, even among customers who remain anonymous at the point of sale.
Executive Perspective on the Value of Unknown Shopper
According to Prasanna Dhore, Chief Data Officer at Fiserv, Unknown Shopper enables merchants to translate in-store transaction data into meaningful insights and customer segments that support more effective customer engagement. By bridging the gap between in-store activity and actionable intelligence, the solution helps businesses better understand their customers and deliver experiences that are relevant, timely, and impactful. This executive perspective underscores Fiserv’s broader commitment to innovation in payments and data analytics, as well as its focus on helping merchants succeed in an increasingly competitive and data-driven marketplace.
Availability and Market Readiness of the Solution
Unknown Shopper is now available to merchants and marketing agencies, reflecting Fiserv’s confidence in the solution’s readiness to deliver immediate value across industries. With growing demand for in-store analytics and attribution capabilities, the launch comes at a time when merchants are actively seeking ways to optimize physical experiences and connect them more seamlessly with digital strategies. By offering a scalable and analytics-driven approach to in-store customer intelligence, Fiserv positions Unknown Shopper as a critical tool for merchants navigating the next phase of commerce evolution.
Demonstration at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show
Fiserv will demonstrate Unknown Shopper at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show, taking place January 11–13 at the Jacob J. Javits Convention Center, where attendees can explore the solution firsthand at Booth #5451. The demonstration will provide retailers and industry professionals with an opportunity to see how Unknown Shopper transforms in-store payment data into actionable insights and supports more effective engagement strategies. Participation in NRF 2026 highlights Fiserv’s ongoing investment in retail innovation and its commitment to helping merchants harness data to drive growth and differentiation.
Positioning Unknown Shopper as a Catalyst for the Future of In-Store Analytics
As commerce continues to evolve, the ability to understand and activate in-store customer behavior will become increasingly critical for merchants seeking to remain competitive. Unknown Shopper from Fiserv represents a significant step forward in closing the insight gap between digital and physical channels, enabling merchants to unlock the full potential of their in-store payment data. By delivering behavioral-based segmentation, improved attribution, and enhanced collaboration with marketing partners, the solution serves as a catalyst for more intelligent, customer-centric strategies across retail, restaurant, and fuel environments.
About Fiserv
Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a Fortune 500 company, moves more than money. As a global leader in payments and financial technology, the company helps clients achieve best-in-class results through a commitment to innovation and excellence in areas including account processing and digital banking solutions; card issuer processing and network services; payments; e-commerce; merchant acquiring and processing; and Clover®, the world’s smartest point-of-sale system and business management platform. Fiserv is a member of the S&P 500® Index, one of TIME Magazine’s Most Influential Companies™ and one of Fortune® World’s Most Admired Companies™.
