Merchant data cleansing in clearing record based on targeted merchants

A system for intermediating cashless transactions from an acquirer involving a payment device issued by an issuer, the system comprising:

• a computing device;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having a program of instruction thereon which when executed by the computing device causes the system to:
• receive a transaction request from the acquirer on behalf of a merchant in a transaction clearing record, the transaction request including data identifying the merchant and the payment device;
• perform a merchant check by comparing the data identifying the merchant included in the transaction request with a list of merchants on a watch-list;
• in response to determining that the merchant included in the transaction request is included in the watch-list, search a first database to determine if a merchant entry exists in the first database corresponding with the data identifying the merchant included in the transaction request, the first database including cleansed merchant data entries;
• in response to determining that a match exists in the first database between a cleansed merchant data entry and the data identifying the merchant in the transaction request, determine whether the data identifying the merchant in the transaction request should be substituted with the matching cleansed merchant data entry;
• in response to determining that the data identifying the merchant should be substituted with the matching cleansed merchant data entry, perform the data substitution;
• and
• forward the transaction request including the substituted cleansed merchant data entry to the issuer of the payment device.

A method of utilizing a computing device to intermediate cashless transactions from an acquirer involving a payment device issued by an issuer, the method comprising:

• receiving a transaction request from the acquirer on behalf of a merchant in a transaction clearing record, the transaction request including data identifying the merchant and the payment device;
• performing a merchant check by comparing the data identifying the merchant included in the transaction request with a list of merchants on a watch-list;
• in response to determining that the merchant included in the transaction request is included in the watch-list, searching a first database to determine if a merchant entry exists in the first database corresponding with the data identifying the merchant included in the transaction request, the first database including merchant aggregation data entries;
• in response to determining a match exists in the database between a merchant aggregation data entry and the data identifying the merchant in the transaction request, appending the merchant aggregation data entry to the transaction request before forwarding the transaction request to the issuer of the payment device;
• and
• forwarding the transaction request including the appended merchant aggregation data entry to the issuer of the payment device.