How long are credit card purchases kept?

Does anyone know how long a person's buying history is kept? Is it ever cleared or anything? Would closing the account clear it?

 

Depends on the company (how long they archive data, etc) and depends on the country (legal data retention requirements, etc). It would seem likely for data to be retained for at least a couple of years, regardless of whether the account is closed or not - but you may have the right (depending on where you live - Europe tends to offer data subjects more rights than the US) to demand that data relating to you be deleted if it is no longer needed.