they don't need to buy the transactions. they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system. then they push apple pay everywhere both offline and on. eventually they will own all the data
Apple says that they don't tie transaction data to you personally. But that they do use it for marketing purposes alongside the obvious fraud prevention.
That's one of those little white lies. Sure, they don't "tie your transaction data to you personally", but they absolutely do. Every purchase you've ever made on the internet has been deanonymized to a globally unique "Device ID". The companies that manage those device ids absolutely have your entire online interaction history, everything.
It only takes about 30 bits of entropy to perfectly deanonymize everyone, and I know of many companies that have been doing it for at least a decade or more.
> they have apple pay that integrates your cards into their system
A feature which they've loudly and publicly said many many times they can't use for tracking your purchases, as they anonymize the data before it gets to them.
Apple has a long history of not using user-generated data for their own use, sometimes to their own detriment.
