Abstract: A merchant sales terminal sends a consolidated receipt record of a customer's transaction to a consolidated receipt system in a server database for access by consumer, advertiser, and data miner/researcher. The receipt record is transferred via the internet immediately after the transaction is approved and authorized, to the online server system know as the consolidated receipt system. Here consumers can access their purchase records including merchant name, total amount, and goods/services bought. Furthermore, here also data miners can research sales of a given product/type of product/brand or sales of a merchant/industry/sector/etc.