Press & Attribution
About American Spend
American Spend is building a low-latency, queryable model of the American economy. The Spend Graph, our model underneath, draws on card transactions, census data, and macroeconomic benchmarks to build a single queryable picture of how the country spends. Nearly a third of U.S. commerce flows through it: two billion transactions a month, organized by merchant, category, and place.
One-liner, for a byline or tight space:
American Spend is building a low-latency, queryable model of the American economy.
Suggested attribution
Source line:
“Source: American Spend.”
In text:
“According to data from American Spend, [finding].”
Name the data product as the Spend Graph when referring to where the data comes from. Use “American Spend model” (lowercase m) when describing the model generically.
Our Spend Graph already indexes over a trillion dollars of American consumer spending a year.
$1.2 trillion
of annual consumer spend tracked
2 billion
transactions indexed per month
150+ million
monthly active accounts
1 million
merchant locations
Coverage & methodology
The Spend Graph is built from transaction data licensed from third-party panels and refreshed daily. Every record that enters the graph is normalized (raw transaction strings cleaned and standardized), mapped to a known merchant entity, and enriched by category, geography, and time.
Insights are computed across cohorts large enough to prevent re-identification of any individual. Published figures are estimates drawn from a growing sample of the economy; coverage and historical figures improve as the graph grows.
For full documentation, see americanspend.com/docs.
What the Spend Graph measures
Card-based consumer spending (credit, debit, and alternative debit) at U.S. merchants, categorized by merchant name, spending category, and geography. The model also incorporates census and CPI benchmark data to contextualize spending patterns.
Exclusions.
Cash, ACH, wire transfers, and non-card payment types fall outside the Spend Graph. Coverage varies by merchant and region.
Characterization.
Describe findings as spending observed in American Spend’s data, not as total merchant revenue or total U.S. spending. The Spend Graph reflects card-based consumer activity within its panel, not an exhaustive count.
Privacy.
Data is licensed at the source. All personally identifiable information (names, emails, phone numbers) is removed before the data reaches American Spend. Individuals are never identifiable in anything American Spend publishes, and individual transaction details are never sold.
Covering the American economy?
For interviews, data, and embargoes, reach the team directly — we turn press requests around same-day.