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Q: Cross Referencing data to get a Merchant ID ( No Answer,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Cross Referencing data to get a Merchant ID
Category: Business and Money > Small Businesses
Asked by: nonniemuno-ga
List Price: $200.00
Posted: 05 Nov 2002 19:24 PST
Expires: 12 Nov 2002 17:25 PST
Question ID: 99998
I'm trying to find a company that can cross reference my customer file
(I have social security number, owner name, address) containing ~
500,000 small businesses with a file of companies that can accept
credit cards (have a merchant account). I'm looking for this company
to append the merchant identification number on the customers they
find have merchant accounts. Is there a company that can do this?
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

The following answer was rejected by the asker (they received a refund for the question).
Subject: Re: Cross Referencing data to get a Merchant ID
Answered By: bcguide-ga on 10 Nov 2002 18:12 PST
Rated:1 out of 5 stars
 
Hi,

I believe that accessing a company’s credit card number is pretty much
the same as accessing an individual's credit card number and you may
have difficulty locating a reputable company to do that.

On the other hand, if you have the information on your customers on
file and they have made purchases by credit card with your company you
only need someone to mine and merge your data files. Many of these
data support companies will allow you to access outside data sources
for appending to your customer files.

I'm not sure what budget you're looking at or whether you are looking
for extended data support or a one time only data merge. However, I
think these companies can provide the service you need.

Nimble Technology
http://www.nimble.com/solutions/customerneeds/

Hummingbird
http://www.hummingbird.com/solutions/bi/index.html

D&B
Provides data integration and can append additional information to
your data records.
http://www.dnb.com/dbproducts/description/0,3604,2-223-1012-0-0-121-155-1,00.html

Siebel Systems
http://www.siebel.com/products/application_network/index.shtm

Axiom SL 
http://www.axiomsl.com/solutions/overview1.htm

Interelate
http://www.interelate.com/solutions/products.asp

The first few searches just returned information on privacy and fraud
protection. The search terms used that picked up the company’s here
were: customer business data integration

Good luck,

bcguide-ga

Clarification of Answer by bcguide-ga on 11 Nov 2002 10:27 PST
Sorry, 

I believe there are two distinct issues, credit card information and
merchant account number. The companies that I've listed do append
third party sources to your data files, which should include merchant
account information. I thought that was what you requested. Have you
checked that they don't? If so, please let me know and I will do
additional research to locate one that fits the criteria.

The reason the question is so difficult to answer is that teasing out
the merchant account and credit account information with online
searches is not easy. The discussion on credit cards was meant to
relate to that. I should have been clearer.

bcguide-ga

Bc-guide

Request for Answer Clarification by nonniemuno-ga on 11 Nov 2002 10:58 PST
Thanks for the clarification. You posed the following question to me
in your emial, "The companies that I've listed do append
third party sources to your data files, which should include merchant
account information. I thought that was what you requested. Have you
checked that they don't?" 

My request for clarification is have you checked that these companies
will append merchant account numbers. That was my question.

Clarification of Answer by bcguide-ga on 11 Nov 2002 14:10 PST
Hi,

This is expensive software - I've been getting quotes of $70,000 to
$100,000. Do you have a
1. budget
2. timeframe (within 6 weeks, 3-6 months, etc.)
3. Where is the data currently stored - do you use an offsite data
warehousing system or is it inhouse?
4. How many users need to access this - is it just you or
multi-departmental, etc.?
5. Where are you located - (South, Northwest, Northeast US, Canada,
UK, etc.)?

A couple of the people I spoke to have had additional suggestion if
your budget is smaller. Let me know and I'll follow up on this. It is
definitely something that can be done according to the reps I've
spoken to.

Thanks,
bcguide-ga

Request for Answer Clarification by nonniemuno-ga on 12 Nov 2002 07:07 PST
Hello,

I'm not looking to purchase any software, just data. You can think of
this as appending data to a list. I have a list of ~ 500,000
customers. I have their SSN, their name, address, their Duns number,
and possibly their federal tax ID. Those customers of mine who accept
credit cards will have a merchant account number. My theory is that
there is a vendor(s) with a data base of merchants who accept credit
cards, and that they can link their file to my file and append the
merchant account number.

I have the data on site. I can put it into any format. I believe I
will only need this done one time. There is a budget for this project,
but not necessarily for the data. I don't think we'll spend more than
$25k for this. Timeframe is end of December.
Reason this answer was rejected by nonniemuno-ga:
I asked for a specific vendor who could append merchant account number
to a file of my customers. I was provided a list of 4 vendors that the
guide thought might be able to append the data, but the guide never
checked with the vendors to see if in fact they could do the append.
The guide wanted me to do that. So he didn't answer my question,
rather he gave me suggestions, which aren't the same as answers. After
asking for additional clarification the guide told me that the
software for this request is expensive, but I'm not looking for
software, I'm looking for data to be appended to a file.
nonniemuno-ga rated this answer:1 out of 5 stars
Not only did I not get an answer to my question, the question was not
understood by the answerer. I'm not looking for a company's credit
card number, I'm searching for their Merchant Account Number.

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