American Express teams with foursquare to promote Small Business Saturday
Squeezed between the traditional holiday-shopping kickoff days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the newer and lesser known Small Business Saturday. It’s an initiative sponsored by American Express that aims to encourage shoppers to support their local small businesses.
In this, the second year of the event, they’ve partnered with foursquare to offer a whopper of a discount on Saturday, November 26. Foursquare users who check in and spend $25 or more on their American Express cards at participating businesses will receive a $25 credit on their American Express statement.
There are more than 100,000 business participating. You’ll be able to find ones nearby on the 26th by opening your foursquare app, tapping Explore and then tapping specials. Be sure to expand your radius out to 10 miles to be able to see them all. You can also find them on the new foursquare website by looking for the map icons highlighted in orange (now that I think of it, they really need to add filters to that map).
Don’t forget to sync your card with foursquare before next Saturday to be eligible. When you check in at a participating business, tap the “load to card” button on the special screen and pay with your American Express card. You’ll get a notification from foursquare that your request was processed and the credit will show up on your statement around 5 business days later.
The beauty of these American Express specials is that there’s no involvement at all on the merchant’s side; the magic is all handled by American Express. You don’t need to worry that the merchant’s staff hasn’t been properly trained and won’t know what you’re talking about as you do with some other foursquare specials.
You can help spread the word about Small Business Saturday by taking the pledge to “shop small” on Facebook.
This is a great initiative to help support small businesses, who often struggle in the face of big box retailers, particularly during the holidays. A $25 discount (especially when you only have to spend $25 to get it) makes a great incentive to shop anywhere.
After the jump: a video from American Express promoting Small Business Saturday.
Sorry, there’s no list of participating merchants. They can’t reveal them until the day of.
http://twitter.com/itsmejon/statuses/137606909514625024
If Amex wants to promote small businesses they should start by reducing their punitive transaction fee. At up to 6% they are 3x what Visa and Mastercard collect while providing no additional services or protections for merchants.
American Express is the least welcome credit card for small businesses to accept, making it all the more ironic that the company wraps itself in a small business promotion.
Hmm, I synched my card today, and the specials were unlocked in my iPhone, but I didn’t receive notification that I got the credits. I am reading this post now, and it says that I should have done it before Thanksgiving. Wait, what??
Then, why on Earth did it let me sync my card today and redeem the specials TODAY during my check-ins?
I am calling Amex and Foursquare. It should not have shown me the specials, OR let me unlock them OR told me they were “loaded to my card” if it was not going to work.
Again, I got a message on my phone that the special was available to me TODAY and that the credit WAS loaded to my account. Bad, bad user interface and misleading customers. I am disappointed as I am a heavy Foursquare user and Amex customer since 1996.