Visa’s Everywhere Initiative fast-tracks the future of payments with Australian and New Zealand startups
11/21/2017
• Six startups presented payment innovations leveraging Visa’s capabilities at Visa’s Everywhere Initiative pitch day
• Easyshare, RainCheck and Puffling among this year's winners, taking home a total prize pool of AU$55,000
Visa, the global payments technology company, today announced the winners of its 2017 Australia and New Zealand Visa’s Everywhere Initiative, a global innovation program aimed at start-ups.
Visa’s Everywhere Initiative challenges start-ups to use the suite of Application Programming Interface (API) available through the Visa Developer platform to solve payments challenges and accelerate the future of commerce, leveraging Visa’s world-class network.
“At Visa we believe that no single organisation can have all the answers – our collective future will be much brighter if we collaborate. Much like the need for diversity within organisations to enable new ways of thinking and unlock creativity, it’s important that businesses small and large work together to define and enable our digital future,” said Stephen Karpin, Group Country Manager for Visa in Australia, New Zealand & South Pacific.
At the pitch event, held as part of the Women in Payments symposium in Sydney, start-ups took home awards in the following categories:
- The Everywhere Consumer Challenge: this challenge asked startups to leverage Visa APIs to augment their products and ultimately drive more powerful commerce experiences for consumers.
- Winner: Easyshare (Australia): An app for consumers living in share houses which streamlines how rent and bills are paid. It enables users to create IOUs, helping ensure all housemates are paying their share of the bills. Easyshare plans to use Visa Direct API to facilitate peer-to-peer payments and create a digital wallet for housemates.
- Winner: Easyshare (Australia): An app for consumers living in share houses which streamlines how rent and bills are paid. It enables users to create IOUs, helping ensure all housemates are paying their share of the bills. Easyshare plans to use Visa Direct API to facilitate peer-to-peer payments and create a digital wallet for housemates.
- The Everywhere Commercial Challenge: this challenge asked startups to leverage Visa APIs to augment their products and ultimately drive more powerful commerce experiences for merchants.
- Winner: RainCheck (Australia): A mobile commerce platform which harnesses machine learning and artificial intelligence to customise the consumer experience with retailers. The platform allows consumers to save and share items, and receive notification about sales and offers both in-store and online. Raincheck plans to use the Visa Direct API to enable peer-to-peer payments to help create a personalised shopping experience, as well as utilising the Visa Token Service to collect data so merchants can track online data with offline sales.
- Winner: RainCheck (Australia): A mobile commerce platform which harnesses machine learning and artificial intelligence to customise the consumer experience with retailers. The platform allows consumers to save and share items, and receive notification about sales and offers both in-store and online. Raincheck plans to use the Visa Direct API to enable peer-to-peer payments to help create a personalised shopping experience, as well as utilising the Visa Token Service to collect data so merchants can track online data with offline sales.
- People’s Choice Award: this award was voted on by the audience at the pitch event.
- Winner: Puffling (Australia): A human resources platform which matches women looking for part-time flexible work and places them into job-share positions. Disrupting traditional recruitment and placing the power in candidates’ hands, Puffling supports equal payment opportunities and allows employers to retain great talent. Puffling plans to use Visa’s CyberSource API to set up a one-click payment solution for hiring managers.
“Congratulations this year’s winners and finalists of Visa’s Everywhere Initiative. It’s great to see such talented innovators building the next generation of commerce,” Karpin said.
The Visa Everywhere Initiative was launched in the U.S. in 2015 and has rapidly expanded since to over 40 countries. So far, nearly 2,000 start-ups have participated, with 125 finalists and 34 winners. Find out more about Visa’s Everywhere Initiative: vi.sa/TEI
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About Visa Inc.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world’s leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of connected commerce on any device, and a driving force behind the dream of a cashless future for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/aboutvisa, visacorporate.tumblr.com and @VisaNews.
About Visa's Everywhere Initiative
Visa's Everywhere Initiative is an innovation program designed to encourage the next big thing in payments, as the payments industry shifts from plastic to digital and new entrants join traditional stakeholders in payments. The program first launched in the U.S. in 2015 and quickly expanded into a global program with more than 2,000 participating start-ups, which have collectively raised over $2 billion in funding, with more than 125 finalists and 34 winners selected. The program is being run in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa in 2017 touching 40 countries.