As Foursquare gets more into the "socializing" loyalty and providing services to merchants does it need a payments solution?

Answer added in topic Mobile Location Applications.

Bertil Hatt, PhD student in Digital Economics & Independent ...

I'm not sure the “more social” and the “payment” part of the strategy are directly connected:



Offering payment, or rather partnering with one could help FourSquare manage coupons, and be more insightful about the ROI of their service — although, I'm not sure besides from a handful of franchises, most shops need that level of understanding to realise FourSquare is relevant.



The social strategy is most likely more implicit: invisible filtering and friends visibility — warnings and alerts could be implemented, but I doubt there is a not-too invasive way to do it, short of offering to share discounts. You might think that payment could be tied to that (history of with whom you used the discount, to filter the alert) but… I wouldn't think so: it makes some sense, but not enough to demand a co-implementation.



One way to tie the two would be to offer a tool to split bills, but I don't see the decisive point of having LBS for that too: associating your memory of last night with guilt over not pintching in might be useful, but I’d rather have a list of debts somewhere, and recommendations to great places elsewhere and not associate the two.



See question on Quora


Post originale: http://www.quora.com/As-Foursquare-gets-more-into-the-socializing-loyalty-and-providing-services-to-merchants-does-it-need-a-payments-solution