SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SPEND PATTERN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS THEREOF
Systems and methods may include gathering transaction data from a user's financial account, wherein the user's financial account is a financial institution account that is maintained on behalf of the user, analyzing the transaction data to determine an amount spent per a selected view type, generating a spending chart displaying the amount spent per selected view type, and displaying the spending chart in association with a statement of the user's financial account. The amount spent may be compared to a benchmark, such as a national average, a city average, a state average, similar people as defined by either a similar spend pattern or similar demographics, and a private group.
1 . A method, comprising:
gathering transaction data from a user's financial account, wherein the user's financial account is a financial institution account that is maintained on behalf of the user;
analyzing the transaction data for a spend pattern;
comparing the spend pattern to the spend patterns for other users;
matching a merchant that the user will interact with based on other users with a similarity in spend patterns having interacted with the merchant; and
displaying the merchant in association with a statement of the user's financial account.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the statement is at least one of an online statement, an online graphical user interface associated with the user's financial account, an online bill pay area, a dialog box associated with the user's financial account, an ATM receipt, a teller receipt, a mobile statement, and a paper statement.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of analyzing comprises extracting at least one of a merchant name, a merchant category, a merchant location, a store number, a transaction amount, a transaction frequency, a zip code, a store category, a transaction description, and a total spending amount.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the user's financial account is at least one of a credit card account, a bank account, a checking account, a savings account, a personal finance program account, and a loan account.
5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a savings opportunity is presented in association with the merchant.
6 . A method, comprising:
gathering transaction data from a user's financial account, wherein the user's financial account is a financial institution account that is maintained on behalf of the user;
analyzing the transaction data to determine an amount spent per merchant; and
generating a spending chart displaying the amount spent per merchant.
7 . A method, comprising:
gathering transaction data from a user's financial account, wherein the user's financial account is a financial institution account that is maintained on behalf of the user;
analyzing the transaction data to determine an amount spent per a selected view type;
generating a spending chart displaying the amount spent per selected view type; and
displaying the spending chart in association with a statement of the user's financial account.
8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the selected view type is by merchant, by category, by week, by month, by time period, by geographical location, and by amount.
9 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising, sorting the data in the spending chart.
10 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising, setting a time period for display of the data in the spending chart.
11 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising, matching a merchant that the user will interact with based on other users with a similarity in amounts spent having interacted with the merchant and displaying the matched merchant in association with a statement of the user's financial account.
12 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising, comparing the amount spent to a benchmark.
13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the benchmark is a national average, a city average, a state average, similar people as defined by either a similar spend pattern or similar demographics, and a private group.
14 . The method of claim 13 , wherein similar demographics comprises a match of at least one of a gender, an age range, a household type, a number of children, a household income, and a geographic location.
15 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the private group is at least one of created by the user or created by another user.
16 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising, enabling users to share information with private group members by email or a social network.
17 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the spending chart is interactive, and where benchmark data are displayed in a dialog box when the user interacts with the data.
18 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the statement is at least one of an online statement, an online graphical user interface associated with the user's financial account, an online bill pay area, a dialog box associated with the user's financial account, an ATM receipt, a teller receipt, a mobile statement, and a paper statement.
19 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of analyzing comprises extracting at least one of a merchant name, a merchant category, a merchant location, a store number, a transaction amount, a transaction frequency, a zip code, a store category, a transaction description, and a total spending amount.
20 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the user's financial account is at least one of a credit card account, a bank account, a checking account, a savings account, a personal finance program account, and a loan account.