1. A method of determining whether a subject merchant location database entry and a candidate merchant location database entry are describing the same merchant location notwithstanding the presence of differences between the subject merchant location database entry and the candidate merchant location database entry, wherein each of the subject merchant location database entry and the candidate merchant location database entry includes a DBA name text field designating the doing business as (DBA) name of each respective merchant location, a street address text field designating the street address of the location of each respective merchant location, and one or more additional descriptive fields descriptive of one or more predetermined characteristics of the respective merchant location, the method comprising: designating a merchant location database entry to be compared as a subject merchant location database entry; populating a set with one or more candidate merchant location database entries for comparison to the subject merchant location database entry, wherein each candidate merchant location database entries selected as a member of the set has a predetermined minimum textural similarity with the subject merchant location database entry on the basis of each database entry's respective DBA name text field or street address text field; comparing the subject merchant location database entry with each of the candidate database entries on the basis of the one or more additional descriptive fields; performing a logistic regression using the results of the comparing to calculate a probability that the merchant location corresponding to the subject merchant location database entry and the merchant location corresponding to one or more of the candidate merchant location database entries are the same merchant location; and outputting the results of the logistic regression.