American Express is teaming with Foursquare for some location-based mobile money services that will be debuted in Austin next week at the South By SouthWest conference.
According to the report:
Under the arrangement, AmEx customers can register their cards in the Foursquare system to get access to special offers from merchants who are also Foursquare participants. Customers who shop at those merchants with an AmEx card will receive credits and electronic notification that they have redeemed the offer. Merchants who participate in the program would potentially see more sales.
This will include a “spend $5, get $5 credit” at certain local merchants and it could help Foursquare remain popular at the SXSW conference, where it first broke into the tech press mainstream. I say tech press because it still is not as a huge hit with the non tech-savvy audience.
Many location-based services will be vying for attention at the SXSW conference next week, including apps from Ask.com and others. Foursquare teaming with AmEx might be enough to help it gain an edge over its younger competitors.
I’m still of the belief that if location-based check-in services do take off, it will be on the back of Facebook Places. This ubiquitous social network has a huge base of users who want to share many things and as they become more comfortable with location services, this may be a natural next step.
[Via The Wall Street Journal]
