Tesco has appointed Goldman Sachs to explore "strategic options" for Dunnhumby, the Big Data firm they took full ownership of in 2010.
Tesco chief executive, Dave Lewis said: "The potential sale of Dunnhumby will have no impact on Clubcard. We don’t need to own it to have commercial arrangements in place. It is a great business but it needs further investment."
"We are looking at all the different options. What I would say is there has been an awful lot of interest in that business and some people will want to work with Tesco and others might not want Tesco to be involved at all."
WPP has been linked with a potential offer for the data specialists, which is thought to be worth between £1bn and £2bn.
Dunnhumby was behind the Tesco Clubcard that launched in 1995 and in December 2014 signed a three year deal with WANdisco’s Non-Stop Hadoop to support retail customer analysis.
The plans to sell of the data business come as part of widespread cost-cutting asset sale plans.
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