By Galen Moore

Has location-based advertising gotten over the check-in? Startups like Foursquare and Gowalla broke the big-brother barrier by convincing users to treat location as a game, volunteering up their location in exchange for points accumulated with check-ins at favorite haunts.

While the two media darlings continue to generate buzz around their location-based coupon and loyalty programs, a cluster of New England startups is quietly wrapping up big-name customers and partners.

CardStar Inc. (formerly based in Canton, Conn.)  today announced a partnership with another Boston startup, Peekaboo Mobile,  to use Peekaboo’s geo-location mobile application to deliver restaurant and retail coupons. Peekaboo, owned by a two-man startup called Byte Ventures LLC, launched in March. OK, you haven’t heard of any of these companies, but two weeks ago CardStar took a $400,000 strategic investment from Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ).

“There’s a big thing around this whole check-in thing,” said Ben Dolgoff, who co-founded Peekaboo with fellow Suffolk University graduate Mike Fruzzetti. “You can go into Foursquare, check in four or five times and be the mayor, and get a coupon. Or you can just go to Peekaboo and get coupons right away.”

The day before the Verizon-Cardstar investment story leaked out, Belmont startup SaveWave Inc. announced its spinoff from Sallie Mae Corp. (NYSE: Sallie Mae) property Upromise, with $2.3 million in a Series A funding from Boston VCs Flybridge Capital Partners and Philadelphia firm First Round Capital. The company is turning the platform for Upromise’s digital grocery coupons into a white-label web and mobile program for other brands.

Grocery mobile coupon developer Pushpins moved back to Boston for the MassChallenge incubator program this month – a short while after winning the California grocery chain Safeway Inc. as a customer, along with instant activation in 1,500 stores on the West Coast.

Last but not least, Scvngr Inc., also of Boston, launched a rewards program Tuesday for its mobile scavenger hunt games in Boston. Last December, Scvngr received a $4 million round of financing led by Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) venture arm Google Ventures.