Merchant tools on Foursquare are free and the company claims to want to always keep them that way. It's challenging for Foursquare to make money when they don't charge their 750,000 businesses for their listings and they definitely won't charge the 20,000,000 on the platform to be able to use it, so they've chosen to generate a bit of revenue by speeding up the process through which businesses can get verified and utilize Foursquare's tools.
It all comes at a cost. Granted, it's not much.
For $10, businesses can instantly verify their account and take advantage of tools such as specials, updating listings, and getting visitor stats. The service is still free for those who do not want to fork over the money, but it takes 3 or 4 weeks using snail-mail for verification.
This program starts in the US and will extend internationally shortly after.
