Qualcomm Retail Solutions, Inc. (“QRS”, formerly Firethorn Mobile, Inc.) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated. QRS has focused on the mobile commerce and payments segment since early 2006. With the addition of the Gimbal™ context awareness and proximity platform to its portfolio, QRS is driving mobile’s transformation of retail by providing leading-edge mobile technologies and solutions that bridge the physical and digital worlds.
Gimbal™
The Gimbal platform enables deployment of mobile-centric customer-engagement systems for delivering highly relevant communications based on end-user context – interests and location – in real time. The Gimbal SDK for iOS and Android is equipped with intuitive features, like integrated geofencing and interest sensing, and understands customers’ preferences, connecting them to the real world in real time:
- Gimbal Geofence is designed to provide always-on, low-power, geofence-based location awareness. This enables an application to become aware of an end user’s location, including arrival, departure and dwell times from the app-defined locations.
- Gimbal Interest Sensing enables applications to adapt profile rules based on the end user’s profile and by learning their interests.
- Gimbal Proximity provides a very granular level of location awareness, enabling applications to determine with a high degree of accuracy their relative proximity to Gimbal-enabled devices.
- Gimbal Communicate allows for personalized communication via push notification and custom content within an application.
- Gimbal Manager is a web-based tool to manage geofences, profile rules, content, distribution, data and analytics.
- Gimbal Privacy allows end users to manage Gimbal and its features, which are designed to protect the consumer’s personal information while giving them command over what and when they share their contexts and interests.
Pay™
Pay is a cloud-based mobile payment technology available to retailers that enables consumers to pay using their smartphones. Using the Pay platform, consumers can pay at the register, or other point-of-sale, using a pre-entered, reloadable stored value card or credit card. For retailers, the existing point-of-sale system is leveraged and transactions are processed as they are today without the need to purchase barcode scanners.
Retailer Benefits
- Quick and easy to deploy
- Eliminates expense of additional hardware
- Integrates with existing systems
- Delivers engaging consumer experience in-store
- Multiple technologies supported (QR, NFC, etc.)
- Tender steering towards lower cost payment types
Consumer Benefits
- Convenient and fast
- Easy to use
- Eliminates need to carry cash and cards
- Unique, engaging experience
- Better customer loyalty experience when combined with loyalty platforms
From Check-In to Check-Out
When deployed together, Gimbal and Pay provide retailers a holistic view of the customer – from sensing interest and context to sending relevant messages – providing unprecedented insight into customer motivations and actions.