Winners to Receive $50,000 to Implement Their Solutions and
Year-long Business Mentorship
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) today invited start-ups to compete in the company’s
second annual The
Everywhere Initiative. In partnership with start-up ecosystem
company, KITE,
Visa is posing three real-life business challenges to the start-up
community to create innovative solutions that solve Visa business
problems and drive the future of commerce. The selected winner of each
challenge will receive $50,000 to be used towards the real-world
production of their solution and mentorship from Visa marketing, product
and technology teams over a year-long period to help bring their
solutions to life.
The Visa Everywhere Initiative was created in 2015 to drive strong
business outcomes by harnessing the creativity and talent from within
the start-up community. Last year’s contest focused on developing new
marketing and communications approaches that would engage millennials
and drive adoption of Visa Checkout. This year, there are three
challenges:
-
The Everywhere API Challenge: Use any relevant Visa APIs
available through the Visa Developer Platform to build a payment
solution that can drive more powerful commerce experiences for
customers within an existing app or via a new app.
-
The Everywhere Global Events Challenge: Creatively leverage
today’s popular social media channels to engage fans at Visa-sponsored
events leveraging advertising technology, influencer networks and
other related platforms.
-
The Everywhere Cardless Challenge: Imagine a world without
physical cards and explain how to encourage Visa accountholders to
load their Visa cards onto every digital payment platform they use.
“With payment and marketing innovation happening at break-neck speed,
Visa is once again asking the start-up community for their best ideas to
help move the industry forward,” said Shiv Singh, senior vice president,
digital and marketing transformation at Visa. “With Visa’s rich set of
APIs and SDKs, we are especially excited to see how our open platform
can help fuel additional payment innovation with this year’s challenges.”
Visa will begin accepting submissions for the three challenges on April
28th. Finalists will be invited to present to a panel of Visa business
and technology leaders who will determine the winners of each challenge.
The winning prototypes will then be showcased in Visa innovation centers
around the world including Dubai, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.
API Preview in Austin
To kick-off this year’s challenge, five start-ups participated in a
mid-March competition “The Everywhere API Challenge” at the Visa
Everywhere Lounge in Austin. The start-ups - Msg.ai,
Ledge,
Eventbase,
Knocki,
and Hiku
– presented their ideas to a panel of Visa technology leaders, with
LA-based Ledge,
a mobile finance platform for P2P lending, taking the top spot. Ledge
received a $25,000 award to build a prototype that integrates Visa
Direct to power the P2P exchange of funds for Ledge campaigns.
In addition to the challenge, Visa is also working with Kellogg School
of Management, the business school of Northwestern University, to
further payment innovation and digital commerce ideas in the classroom.
To find out more regarding Visa’s partnership with Kellogg School of
Management visit Visa.com.
“We’ve already seen five outstanding ideas from a diverse group of
start-ups in Austin,” said Singh. “With Visa China running its own
Everywhere Initiative competition this year, and adding our student
initiative, we look forward to growing The Everywhere Initiative to
start-ups, students and developers all across the world who want to help
us build the future of payments and engage consumers in new and dynamic
ways.”
About Visa Inc.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is a global payments technology company
that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and
governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure
and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world's most
advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling
more than 65,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection
for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and
does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers.
Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers
to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, pay ahead of time
with prepaid or pay later with credit products. For more information,
visit usa.visa.com/about-visa,
visacorporate.tumblr.com
and @VisaNews.
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