A method and system for recommending a merchant are provided. The method includes receiving financial transaction data documenting financial transactions between a plurality of account holders and a plurality of merchants and generating a merchant correspondence matrix that includes the plurality of merchants and a plurality of indicators of interactions associated with pairs of the plurality of merchants. The plurality of indicators of interactions tallying financial transactions conducted by the plurality of account holders at both of the merchants in a pair of the plurality of merchants. The method further includes receiving a query for a recommendation of a merchant from an account holder and generating a ranked list of merchants based on a recommender algorithm. The recommender algorithm inferring user preferences from attributes of the plurality of merchants that were visited by the cardholder.