Qualcomm’s Firethorn Begins Rollout of Wireless Gift Card Ahead of Holiday Season

Three years ago, San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) paid $210 million in cash to acquire an Atlanta mobile banking startup called Firethorn Holdings. At the time, some commentaries emphasized that mobile banking in the United States was emerging at a snail’s pace. Even Firethorn founder Tripp Rackley told GigaOm last November, “It’s going to be a long time before mobile payments take off; there will be a lot of people trying to make that happen. But until we go into a grocery store and see people pulling phones out to pay, we won’t be there.”

This year, however, Qualcomm’s Firethorn is showing new signs of life, with a series of announcements that suggest the mobile commerce subsidiary has some big plans for the shopping season just over the horizon:

—In March, Qualcomm named a 25-year veteran of the financial services industry, Rocco Fabiano, as Firethorn president (replacing Rackley), saying he would provide strategic leadership as Firethorn expands into new markets.

—Firethorn said in early August it had signed American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based clothing manufacturer, to accept its “Swagg” mobile application in time for the 2010 holiday season. Swagg is a mobile application for smart phone users that enables shoppers to purchase a “virtual” gift card that can be stored, personalized, and exchanged on smartphones.

—Less than a week later, Firethorn disclosed a collaboration with Discover Financial Services (NYSE:[[tickerDFS]]) in which the Discover Network will provide core processing services for payment transactions when Firethorn’s Swagg customers use the service at certain merchants (such as American Apparel).

—Earlier this week, the florist retailer and gift shop, 1-800-Flowers.com (NASDAQ: [[ticker:FLWS]]), the world’s largest florist and gift shop, also signed on as a Swagg-participating merchant in what appears to be part of a recurring announcement tactic, calling attention to its “growing list” of participating merchants.

Taken together, the recent spate of announcements reflects the

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.