Why Are There Gaps in the Spend Data?

Overview

Sometimes, you might notice missing or incomplete Spend data in Almanac's dashboards or reports. These gaps are not errors—they are intentional omissions based on data privacy and compliance standards set by Mastercard.

Why Gaps Occur

Mastercard’s Geo Insights data is anonymized and aggregated. To protect privacy, data for a specific geographic area (or “quad”) is only included if it meets strict thresholds for the number of merchants, accounts, and transactions. If a quad does not meet these thresholds, the data for that area is withheld.

This most commonly happens:

• In low-commercial-density areas (e.g., rural zones or quieter urban pockets)
• At very granular levels of zoom (e.g., Zoom Level 18: ~150m x 150m blocks)
• On days with minimal transaction activity

How to Handle Gaps

• Increase the date range: Almanac provides Spend data as average daily values. Expanding your selected date range can help fill in the picture by capturing data from days with higher activity, which meet Mastercard’s reporting thresholds.
• Don’t assume zero activity: A missing value does not mean there were no transactions—just that the volume wasn’t high enough to meet compliance rules.