MasterCard is looking to mine its trove of customer card payment data to build a site which will provide global travellers with a ranking of popular restaurant destinations in cities worldwide.
Cristobel von Walstrom, vice president, MasterCard Advisors Information Services says the site will run on purchasing beahviour, "that is, how people are voting for restaurants with their wallets".
She says that where people actually eat when they're in their hometowns and when they're travelling helps to provide a better insight into popular destinations than online review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, which are too easily gamed.
Says von Walstrom: "With petabytes of purchase behavior, we'll be able to make a variety of recommendations, so you can eat where New Yorkers eat when they're in Barcelona…or if you want to avoid New Yorkers when you're in Barcelona, where they don't eat."