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It's nice to look online and see which transactions I made and when, but I think it would be nicer to see which items were bought as well. So I'm looking for that. I want to start making all my purchases with a card that does that.

Which, if any, credit or debit cards will do that? If they also have tools for downloading or analyzing the data, that would be the best.

That way I can see things like how long a typical stick of deodorant lasts me. Or if I make a purchase at a Walmart, I can see how much of it was food and how much was school supplies, things like that. I might even nerd out about my finances and compare which month I buy the most food in, or what my average price of a gallon of gas was for the month.

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    Why do you think the credit card company would have any way of knowing what you purchased?
    – JBentley
    Jun 5, 2016 at 11:30
  • Short answer, because I had no idea one way or the other. Long answer, every time I make a purchase, there's a receipt. I thought the data on the receipt gets sent somewhere, like a credit card processing company, and that my credit card company might have a record of what got processed. I didn't know if that existed or not, but that's why I thought it might. Plus, my friend called his credit card company and had to verify some purchases he made because they flagged them as fraudulent. I thought they were asking him about exact items he bought. But maybe it was just the specific store.
    – user26275
    Jun 6, 2016 at 16:11

3 Answers 3

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That info isn't in the credit card transaction data record. Keep and scan your receipts.

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  • Also consider signing up for loyalty card as many stores now provide you with the ability to login and view receipts for transactions made using the loyalty card
    – Eric Johnson
    Jun 5, 2016 at 2:46
  • Tupohgrapic errrors fixed.
    – keshlam
    Jun 5, 2016 at 4:50
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    Not entirely accurate. AmEx, for example, does get itemizations from at least some retailers (the major office-supply stores, for example).
    – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-
    Jun 5, 2016 at 14:09
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    @chrylis I was surprised to find how much detail my company issued Amex passes through. There is itemized details for many travel providers (itinerary, rental car class, hotel charge breakdown) which does support expense reporting/support corporate auditing of expenses..
    – user662852
    Jun 5, 2016 at 23:10
  • @chrylis - I'd guess it's from any retailer which often deals with selling to corporations. Level 3 data (line items) is important in business-to-business sales, for exactly the reason that user662852 suggests.
    – Bobson
    Jun 16, 2016 at 2:23
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I'm a banker by profession and worked at the Marketing Analytics for 5 years. Usually a bank will not track the items a customer has purchased coz it will not help them in sales of Credit and Debit cards. Instead, all the merchants are categorised under different modules i.e Supermarket, Insurance, Education and etc. So based on the module, data is extracted, analysed and forecasted. Your typical credit card statement will not mention the items you have purchased, instead it will give you the merchants name.

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In theory, this is possible. Many purchase orders which are paid by credit card use what's called Level 3 data, which is essentially line-item data. However, it has to be supported by everyone along the chain between the merchant and your bank, and there's very little reason for most retail outlets to add support. To quote from that site:

Submitting Level 3 card data is fairly complex and requires the use of specialized point-of-sale systems.

In addition to the terminal and point-of-sale being able to support the data, the merchant's processor has to have support for it (many do, but by no means all), and your bank has to have a way to show you the data, which most consumer-focused banks I'm aware of don't.

From what I've seen on other people's cards, American Express tends to show you more information about your purchases than other cards, but that tends to be things like hotel data, airplane flight information, and other industry-specific stuff. Retail transactions wouldn't show any more detail than otherwise.

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