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Rewards cards / loyalty card are designed to incentivize you to spend more with the stores. Ostensibly reselling data is a lot less valuable than directly trying to convince you to shop more at their establishments

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That was true at the beginning of the loyalty card phage. But now the big chains are learning how to data mine and discovering the value of their data to others.

Now your loyalty card data is worth twice as much. Once to the retailer for internal marketing, targeting, purchasing, etc... and again selling it to outside parties.

thanks, sorry to reply to this late. I often wonder if I take a loyalty card and then for example I purchase twice as much double cream as the next person, does this get sold to health insurers who then charge me a higher premium? The permutations are endless eg too much beer. too many condoms. Too much spicy dip.

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