What Is an Activity Company?
An activity company is any external business entity whose transactional data is captured and presented within a centralized customer-facing statement or platform. This typically happens in systems that aggregate data from multiple sources to offer a unified view to the end user.
Where This Term Is Used
- Banking and Fintech Platforms
Banks or fintech apps often offer services that consolidate a customer’s transactions from multiple accounts and merchants. Each merchant or financial institution contributing data is an activity company. - Expense Management Systems
Corporate or personal expense tracking tools pull transaction data from various vendors—each vendor is an activity company. - Loyalty and Rewards Platforms
Some rewards programs track customer purchases across a network of companies. Those companies are considered activity companies. - Payment Aggregators and Statement Consolidators
Services that combine bills, purchases, and other transactions into one statement (e.g., Plaid, Yodlee, or Mint) identify sources of those transactions as activity companies.
Key Characteristics of an Activity Company
- Provides Transaction Data:
The company must generate data related to financial or transactional activity (sales, billing, purchases, etc.). - Linked to a Central Platform:
This data is fed into a centralized system—like a bank, app, or financial dashboard. - Visible to the Customer:
The data appears in a user-facing format, such as a monthly statement, app dashboard, or summary report.
Related Concepts
- Data Aggregator: The platform collecting and centralizing data from activity companies.
- Transaction Source: Often used interchangeably with activity company in technical documentation.
- Financial Institution (FI): A broader term; banks and credit unions can be both activity companies and data providers.