Telefonica has teamed up with international courier company SEUR and online private driver service Cabify to create new smart buttons for immediate “click&go” access to the companies’ services. The battery-powered smart buttons are the latest Internet of Things (IoT) devices developed by the Telefonica I+D research unit and will eventually be offered on a white-label basis to allow different companies to configure and customise them to meet their specific needs. The OneClick product created for SEUR will enable its customers to activate collection requests with just a click, automatically generating a package collection order. A pilot of this service, available on the seur.com website, will launch in Madrid in September before being rolled out throughout Spain.
Similarly, the button developed for Cabify will allow customers to request a vehicle to pick them up, choose the type of vehicle they want, print a receipt with the name and phone number of the driver and receive details of the car and driver assigned to collect them. The smart buttons come with an integrated SIM and don’t need a smartphone or PC to operate. If a global SIM is inserted, the buttons work anywhere in the world, which is why Cabify has plans to offer the service in the other Latin American countries in which it operates, including Mexico, Peru and Chile.
Telefonica introduced its first smart button last November, when it joined forces with Spanish restaurant chain Telepizza to launch Click&Pizza, giving Telepizza customers the ability to order their favourite pizza at the push of a button. Telefonica also recently teamed up with the Spanish R&D division of Samsung Electronics to work together on new technologies and the development of use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT).
