Hmmm. Ok, I think I’m getting there slowly (and sorry if I’m coming across as a bit thick here)… but what is the result of matching the user’s location to Google’s merchant data? Isn’t the merchant identified as a result of the transaction?
I guess what I’m getting at is, and if I look at a transaction example in the app, I see a number of things:
The location, marked with a pin on a map (in this case one cached from Google), which is achieved through the LON+LAT info;
The merchant name, which is derived from the transaction data itself;
And the merchant’s logo, which I believed is pulled from their avi on social media (twitter?) if it exists.
What specifically requires Google’s merchant data?
I would imagine that nothing currently NEEDS Google’s merchant data in the iOS UI but in the future they’ll be able to get the UI to show the place, rather than just the location.
This means you’ll be able to get all the enriched Google Places data in the client, such as opening times, contact details, current busyness of the location/expected future busyness, Street View and other photos, reviews, integration with menus, ordering and other custom business information such as what it’s good at and other related businesses/competitors, etc., etc.