CARDFREE Targets Merchant Wallet Customer Efficiency

The power of location-based services has only increased in the restaurant industry, but will it last?

CARDFREE, a mobile commerce provider, certainly thinks so as it has just entered into an exclusive agreement to use Bluedot Innovation’s location-based technology that claims to deliver 20 times the precision of competing products.

The company announced today (March 5) that it has secured an exclusive agreement to use Bluedot’s restaurant-location services to enable promotion, order and payments through its mobile platforms. While CARDFREE’s mobile commerce platform provides full customer lifecycle capabilities, including smart offers, gifting, order-ahead, stored value, payments, loyalty and rich data analytics, the partnership with Bluedot will allow it to tap into its innovative location-based commerce technology that uses precise GPS location for customers, but without draining battery on mobile devices.

The location-based offers are able to target consumers to receive an offer, submit an order or enable a mobile payment. CARDFREE and Bluedot also plan to partner in international markets later this year. Restaurant goers can choose to receive an offer, submit an order, and enable a mobile payment or any number of services automatically based on their proximity to any entrance or drive-thru in the US.

“We are happy to answer the overwhelming merchant interest in location-based marketing by presenting our customers with an exclusive technology that is more accurate and seamless than current solutions in market,” said Jon Squire, founder and chief executive officer of CARDFREE. “Though we enable beacons as well as other approaches, we are extremely excited to offer our customers Bluedot’s cutting-edge alternative that addresses the need for easy, precise and cost-effective location-services. We’ll offer these services as stand-alone solutions as well as integrated with our platform components.”

According to CARDFREE, its platform has been selected by numerous top 50 quick service restaurants and is currently expanding to other restaurant categories and verticals including grocery and convenience stores. Following the partnership announcement, Bluedot also shared its thoughts on the deal. Although the company already enables beacons as well as other approaches, they are now able to offer an alternative that addresses the need for precise and cost effective locations services.

“CARDFREE is the clear mobile commerce leader with QSRs and we’re excited to partner with them to deliver some truly innovative services to the market,’ commented Emil Davityan, co-founder of Bluedot Innovation. “By combining our breakthrough technology with CARDFREE’s industry-leading platform, restaurants can improve the overall experience for their customers by interacting with them at precisely the time and place that’s most relevant. The partnership between Bluedot Innovation and CARDFREE will deliver some of the most creative and game changing location services solutions available for merchants to date.”