- Respected institutions such as the Federal Reserve, Harvard University, JP Morgan Chase, and Bloomberg have used Womply’s benchmark data to better understand COVID-19’s impact on local markets and the broader U.S. economy
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Womply, the local commerce platform that provides apps, APIs, marketing, and financial tools to make local commerce happen, today revealed a summary of how the company’s Benchmark API has helped a wide range of public and private institutions make sense of evolving consumer spending patterns amid COVID-19.
During the U.S. outbreak, Womply’s Benchmark API has become a ubiquitous source of truth for understanding local commerce. Since March 2020, scores of respected organizations in government, non-profit, academia, finance, and journalism have used the Benchmark API or its underlying data to visualize how the novel coronavirus is impacting local markets and, by extension, the broader economy. Womply provided free data access to these institutions to help advocate for struggling American small businesses.
“COVID-19’s impact on the U.S. economy has been broader and deeper than anything since the Great Depression,” said Womply Founder and CEO Toby Scammell. “In the early days of the pandemic, when businesses were shut down from coast to coast, it was as if the entire nation had been hit by a hurricane — that’s the kind of financial duress we saw. Since then, targeted government interventions and increased consumer spending have improved a bleak situation, but we continue to monitor trends on a daily basis.”
Over the last decade, Womply has built the most complete local commerce dataset in the U.S. In October 2019, Womply launched the Womply Developer Platform, which allows organizations to tap into business, consumer, and market data for 10 million businesses and 275 million consumers. The Womply Developer Platform’s first commercially available API, Benchmark, uses aggregated financial data to characterize consumer spending trends nationally and in local markets down to the zip code level. All of Womply’s Benchmark data is anonymized, aggregated, and held to the strictest privacy and security standards.
The speed and severity of the COVID-19 economic crush left many public and private institutions scrambling to try to make sense of things. Some of the most respected organizations in the country have turned to Womply’s benchmark data to get a clear view of a fluid economic situation. Some of these institutions include:
- Government and nonprofit entities such as the Federal Reserve, Centers for Disease Control, General Services Administration, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and state economists in various governors’ offices.
- Academic institutions such as Harvard University, Brown University, University of Chicago, University of California-Berkeley, University of Missouri, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
- Fortune 500 financial services firms such as JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citi (NYSE: C), CapitalOne (NYSE: COF), Barclay’s (BATS: VXX), Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB), and Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW).
- Global and national news media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Bloomberg, New York Times, NPR, USA Today, Fox Business, CNN, and The Economist.
Notably, Womply’s benchmark data is the primary source of local business revenue data for the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker (which was created by renowned economists at Harvard and Brown), multiple national monetary policy reports prepared by the Federal Reserve, and dozens of equity analyst reports from tier-one financial services firms. In addition, Womply’s data has been cited in the press nearly 5,000 times since mid-March.
“When we launched the Benchmark API, we knew it would be invaluable to app developers and financial institutions,” Scammell said. “We are pleased that it’s also become a crucial asset for an array of public and private organizations that are trying to get a firm grasp on what’s happening on Main Street. The use cases for our benchmark data and API have proliferated exponentially over the past few months, to the benefit of everyone with a vested interest in the health of the U.S. economy.”
Womply has also published an extensive library of original economic data analyses using the same benchmark data. Womply’s COVID-19 data dashboard, which has been cited hundreds of times, is a holistic and continually updated look at year-over-year revenue variance and small business closures nationwide. A complete list of Womply’s COVID-19 data analyses — which includes industry deep-dives and regional reports for key states and cities — is available at https://www.womply.com/covid-19/.
For more information about Womply APIs, contact Michael Katz, General Manager, at data-access@womply.com. You can learn more about Womply APIs at https://www.womply.com/apis/ and request API access at https://www.womply.dev/accounts/create.
About Womply
Womply’s mission is to help local businesses thrive in a digital world. Founded in 2011, Womply is a local commerce platform that provides apps, APIs, marketing, and financial tools to make local commerce happen for over 500,000 American businesses and their customers. All of Womply’s products and services are powered by the Womply Commerce Graph, a proprietary data asset that offers the most complete view of local commerce. To learn more, visit www.womply.com or email info@womply.com.
Contacts
Dallin Hatch
Director of Marketing Communications
Womply
press@womply.com
