foursquare.com Foursquare’s new statistics page will share information about users with business owners.

11:10 a.m. | Updated Corrected the name of the AJ Bombers restaurant.

Foursquare, a location-based social network, plans to distribute a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments.

Tristan Walker, director of business development at Foursquare, said that the latest features were intended to help local merchants run their stores by giving them more information about their customers.

“We’re trying to give businesses more retention with current customers and the ability to add new customers with specials,” said Mr. Walker.

Foursquare is a service that allows users to share their location with a group of friends from “checking in” to a restaurant, business or other venue when they arrive. The company encourages the businesses to recognize Foursquare users in some fashion, such as a bar awarding free drinks to their most frequent customers.

With the new tool, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to the place via Foursquare, when they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. Business owners will also be able to offer instant promotions to try to engage new customers and keep current ones.

“If a restaurant can see one of its loyal customers has dropped off the map and is no longer checking in, the owner could offer them incentives to come back,” said Mr. Walker.

There will also be a Staff page available to each business that will allow employees to interact directly with customers using social networks.

foursquare.com The Staff section of a Foursquare venue.

Foursquare recently partnered with 30 small businesses to test the tool, and it plans to gradually roll it out to another 900 businesses in the coming weeks.

AJ Bombers, a burger bar in Milwaukee, tested the new statistics tool and plans to use it to choose specials and promote new menu items, said Joe Sorge, co-owner of the restaurant.

“If I’m in another location, I can actually sit and look at that screen and see who checked in last, and I can reach out via Twitter and say ‘Welcome. Have you been here before? What kind of food do you like?’” said Mr. Sorge. “It makes the experience more enjoyable for the customer.”

Shelley Bernstein, chief of technology at the Brooklyn Museum, sees promise in the Staff pages. “Basically, the new statistics tools give us the ability to promote a personal face for our staff so we’re not just seen as an institution,” she said. “We’re wrapping all of this into our Web site through Foursquare’s A.P.I.’s, and we allow people to interact with staff and have the opportunity to engage with them in new ways.”

Another test customer, P.C.C. Natural Markets, a Seattle-based organic foods company, saw a large number of new Foursquare users coming to its stores over the weekend and used the analytics tool to figure out where they were coming from.

“By using the Foursquare dashboard, we figured out that they were coming for a new organic doughnut that had been advertised on TV,” said Ricardo Rabago, social media specialist for the company.

Mr. Rabago hopes to use the new tool to figure out when people are coming for lunch and offer coupons and specials to entice them to return.

Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s chief executive, said this new feature is useful for the consumer and the merchant and the tool will continue to evolve over the coming months “to incorporate more analytics and insight.” Mr. Crowley also said there will be an opt-in, opt-out setting in the privacy panel that will give Foursquare users the ability to keep their information private.

Abstract:

M-Via, a young mobile phone payment service that lets you send or receive money internationally on any type of phone — even if you and your recipients don’t have bank accounts — has raised $5 million in debt financing, according to a filing with the SEC.

Systems like m-Via’s are becoming increasingly important in the developing world, particularly in Africa and Latin America, where most people’s primary screens, and connections to the internet, are their phones. More and more capabilities need to be added to the most affordable, perfunctory handsets, to allow people to conduct basic life tasks and transactions.

Just like with Western Union, m-Via says you can use its product no matter who you are, how much money you have, or what the status of your credit history is. Aptly, m-Via’s tagline is “Sending cash, now as easy as making a call,” or, alternatively, “Think PayPal for the unbanked with viral distribution via SMS.”

Considering that $300 billion is transferred from the U.S. to people in other countries, and that 175 million unbanked migrants in the U.S. use money transfer services like Western Union to help support recipients elsewhere, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company seems to have stumbled on a big, untapped market.

Right now, secure transactions can be initiated by senders placing a call to a live operator, sending a text message or accessing a web page on a mobile browser. The sender drops off the cash he or she wants to send at the local wireless retailer. The recipient can forward the money on from there, retrieve the cash at an ATM, or get it at a local retailer (an m-Via partner or “hot spot”) without needing a debit card.

Because most senders using the service will probably be sending money on a regular basis, they can choose to pay a monthly fee to send an unlimited amount. This ends up costing much less than other money transfer services, which skim off fees up to $20 per transaction, m-Via says.

Right now, the startup is focusing on transactions between Mexico and the U.S. — its web site comes in both English and Spanish. It operates 95 “hot spots” in California right now, and is launching new ones in Texas, Arizona, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey this year. Eventually, it will turn its attention to India, China and the Philippines, where people receive hundreds of millions every year from family members or friends in the U.S.

M-Via has representatives from RRE Ventures and Windsor Media on its board of directors.