Foursquare’s upcoming AMEX partnership helps users check-in to better deals

By Jeff Hughes June 22, 2011

New York based Foursquare Labs is set to announce a large partnership with American Express come Thursday. The social networking service will be offering users special deals at specific locations when they use Foursquare and an American Express card.

Foursquare is the service that uses your mobile device to blab your location to friends, commonly known as “checking-in”. Though Facebook and Google have moved into this sphere, the start-up is still largely associated with the concept and holds its own against the giants with 10 million registered users so far.

The partnership will allow Foursquare users to sync the service with their American Express card. Once synced, when users check-in at a location they will get specials loaded directly to the card. No more coupons, just use the card.

Though users already get rewards for checking-in to places, the American Express partnership offers better deals. For example, the deals will be offered at Sports Authority, H&M and certain restaurants. Users can look forward to getting $10-20 credited to their AMEX accounts when they spend over $50 at some of these stores.

The New York Times says that Foursquare will not be getting money from this AMEX deal. Like the way internships work, the move is designed to help legitimize the company and attract money in the future. The Chief Executive of Foursquare Dennis Crowley even said this deal is a sign that the company, with it’s $21 million from investors and now 60 employees, is maturing. AMEX benefits from the partnership by encouraging more spending and by helping their image with the hip, technologically savvy under 35 crowd.

Madeline K. Aufseeser, a senior market analyst at the Aite Group believes that this a whole new industry evolving which is more sophisticated than daily deal sites like LivingSocial and Groupon which offer deals at random. Foursquare’s new partnership helps users as well as merchants who can cut out paper coupons and target promotions more efficiently.

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