Snap is partnering with Foursquare to utilise its location intelligence data, which powers 100,000 services including Twitter and Uber, and improve geofilters for its messaging app.

Foursquare, maker of a local search and discovery app, said its data helps enterprises reach new audiences, understand consumers, build smarter apps, and make business decisions based on real-world patterns and behaviours.

Mike Harkey, VP of business development at Foursquare, explained that “to translate how phones see the world, we triangulate signals such as WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and more, and determine where a phone is located… This helps us create our map of the world.”

Foursquare has 87 million places in its database. “This opens up whole new categories of venues for Snap’s database, so Snapchat could offer geofilters pegged to places like parks, farmers’ markets and speakeasies, all based on Foursquare venue shapes and our extensive categorisation of places,” he added.

Thanks to this technology, Snapchat users will get “better, more relevant geofilters, and allow their advertisers more flexibility and creativity.”

Snap describes geofilters as “special overlays” that appear to users based on where they are, and can feature the name of the city they are in or the current temperature. Businesses can purchase branded geofilters to promote events or products.

Foursquare pointed out that it is sending data to Snapchat but not getting user data back.

Earlier this week it was reported Snap filed for an IPO and hopes to raise as much as $4 billion.