Card Panel

Enigma has a large panel of credit and debit card transactions. Enigma uses this information to understand the financial health of a business, and calls the family of attributes derived from this panel the Merchant Transaction Signals.

Scale

Enigma’s card panel is the largest panel of U.S. credit card transactions of its kind and covers transactions on all of the major card networks. The panel is made up of more than 750 million active credit and debit cards. Enigma estimates the panel covers ~40% of all credit card transactions in the U.S. and ~38% of all credit card spending in the U.S.

The Enigma panel covers over 50 billion card transactions per year, and the Federal Reserve Payment Study (FRPS) estimates that there are ~125 billion transactions per year.
The Enigma panel covers more than $2.5 trillion in spending per year, and the FRS estimates there is $7 trillion in spending on cards in the U.S. (as of 2020).

Data refresh

The card panel refreshes once per month.

Sourcing

Enigma’s data is sourced from credit card issuers. Enigma's card panel is built from two partnerships:

One partnership includes many of the top credit card issuers in the country.
A second partnership, introduced in Q4 2022, covers alternative card providers.

Card types

The panel covers various card types:

Consumer General Purpose Cards
Consumer Debit Cards
Small business credit cards
Small business debit cards
Alternative cards
HSA/FSA cards
Gift cards
Government benefit cards
Incentive cards
Payroll cards

The Enigma panel does not cover:

Corporate cards
Private label cards
Charge cards

So while Enigma’s panel covers ~40% of all transactions, that is not distributed evenly across card types. Enigma is believed to cover ~70% of consumer credit card transactions, ~50% of consumer debit card transactions, ~50% of small business credit card transactions, and 0% of corporate card transactions.

Industry coverage

The coverage of different card types means that Enigma is able to provide much more accurate Merchant Transaction Signals information for consumer facing businesses than B2B business.

Examples of industries where the Merchant Transaction Signals are quite strong:

Restaurants
Retail and Ecommerce
Personal Care
Veterinarians
Doctors and Dental
Arts and entertainment
Automotive Repair and Services
Other consumer services

Biases in the panel

Because the panel source comes from so many of the largest credit card issuers in the U.S., no geographic skews should exist in the panel.

Spending from the highest income consumers and luxury card types is underrepresented in the panel. Business payments are also underrepresented in the panel. This causes Enigma to underestimate the revenues of luxury retailers and many B2B companies. This is evidenced by the fact that the average transaction size witnessed in the Enigma panel is ~$40, while the average transaction size across all card types is estimated to be closer to $55, according to the FRPS.