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Credit card offers to become major revenue stream for Foursquare with expansion to Visa and Mastercard

7

on February 26th, 2013

four-square-special-burger-kingFoursquare today is expanding their nearly two year old program that offered deals to users who paid with American Express cards to Visa and Mastercard cardholders, according to a report from AdAge. Foursquare will get a cut from the deals, making it an important new revenue stream for the company going forward.

The structure of the offers will be essentially the same as those seen with American Express cards since SXSW 2011. The one launching today at 8,000 US Burger King locations, for instance, offers users $1 off when they spend $10 in a single transaction.

Credit card offers will be more prominent throughout the app, denoted by their own symbol to differentiate them from the specials offered by local merchants. Users will also be able to see their synced cards (credit or debit) within the app and add new ones.

Like the American Express offers, the discount portion of the transaction will be handled on the back end in the form of a statement credit, so there’s no need for merchants to reprogram POS systems or train cashiers to handle the discounts. And for users it means a no hassle discount with no worries about encountering a cashier who’s never heard of Foursquare.

While the American Express deals were originally a way for American Express to get some promotion within Foursquare and Foursquare to get their name linked to American Express, the new deals will see Foursquare earning a fee for each transaction processed. With the slow rollout of promoted updates, credit card offers could immediately become a major new revenue stream for the company. Participating businesses stand to gain insights into their customers, with check-ins linked directly to sales.

What do you think of the offers? Do you think this is Foursquare’s ticket to revenue?

  • http://www.c0wb0yz.com c0wb0yz

    Aside pre-loading the app on phones (like on the Nokia Lumia), definitely their smartest business development move to date. I bet it will drive user adoption and revenue up. Maybe more importantly, I also think that – if they play their PR cards well -, it’s a unique opportunity to kill once and for all the 2009/10-old “foursquare = checkin + badges” and engrave in everybody’s mind that now “foursquare = discovery + SAVING MONEY”

  • http://twitter.com/marruciic Mareks Matisons

    How it is managed technically?

  • http://twitter.com/RockinKitteh Rossi

    We shall see. In the past Amex has offered some great, high value savings offers. They need to match that and even do better. Saving $1 at BK its not going to convince me to link my Visa or MC to 4sq. Entrusting my data to DataFirst is another issue. I will probably use a virtual CC with a small limit

    • http://aboutfoursquare.com/ Chris Thompson

      Yes, they’re going to have to do a lot better than $1 off $10 at Burger King to get people interested. I’m really disappointed that was the one they chose for a launch partner.

      With regards to First Data, they’re a huge company that has to abide by all the rules and regulations of Visa and Mastercard. I’m not too concerned with them being a middleman for this.

  • http://www.9kizi.com/ 9kizi

    i used master card

  • http://twitter.com/soundslikerhea Rhea Galsim

    Maybe spend $10 get a free burger?

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