In a most interesting blog post by Foursquare today, the company’s biz dev team talks about how the location-based app plans to evolve its platform by integrating with “thousands of merchants”.
As MG Siegler writing on TechCrunch noted, down near the end of the blog post under Redemptions is further discussion about how this mobile location-based platform might evolve to make the user experience easier in terms of redeeming offers by Foursquare users. It seems to allude to yet another bar code to POS application on the horizon.
As technology advances and Point of Sale systems get smarter, this responsibility can move from humans to barcode scans, loyalty card integrations and other means, thus reducing the potential friction.
What do you think? Do you use Foursquare and enjoy collecting badges, etc. as you check-in at various locations? Would you participate in loyalty offers from merchants – and want to redeem them quickly at POS?
Scott is a founder of Glenbrook with more than 30 years of experience in information technology. He is a co-author of the book “Payments Systems in the U.S.” and a co-inventor of US Patent 6,332,126 and US Patent 7,840,459. At Glenbrook, Scott focused his work on payments innovation, mobile payments, and social media / Web 2.0 in banking and financial services.
Previously, Scott was group executive vice president at First Data Merchant Services and at Visa International, where he led the development of Visa’s global payment systems strategies. Scott began his career as a systems engineer with IBM, where he held a series of technical management and product planning positions over seventeen years. Scott formally retired from Glenbrook in October 2016, but remains important to the firm as both a friend and advisor.