Global credit card company, Visa, is staging a competition for Australian and New Zealand for startups that can develop innovative applications using Visa APIs “to solve business challenges and bring new ideas to payments.”
Its ‘Everywhere Initiative’ competition is being staged in Australia and New Zealand for the first time, in partnership with Australian co-working space Tank Stream Labs and New Zealand business growth hub, The Icehouse, following earlier events in the US and China.
Stephen Karpin, group country manager for Visa in Australia, New Zealand & South Pacific, said: “The Everywhere Initiative is designed to accelerate Visa’s vision of co-creating the future of payments. It’s one of many initiatives, including our API platform, Visa Developer, to drive the next generation of commerce for consumers.”
Visa provides a catalogue of about 50 APIs covering a range of payment related services. Participants in the Challenge can use these to tackle three different challenges:
- The Everywhere API Consumer Challenge: using Visa APIs to improve the experience or solve a problem faced by consumers when they make or receive payments.
- The Everywhere API Commercial Challenge: using Visa APIs to address a problem experienced by businesses when they make or receive payments.
- The Everyone, Everywhere Challenge: developing a solution that makes payments frictionless for consumers with disabilities and expands access to Visa’s payments to everyone, everywhere.
The closing date for entries is 31 August. From these a short-list will be chosen and invited to take part in a public pitch event on 22 September in Sydney, with help from Visa’s partner in the project, US company Kite. Kite provides matchmaking services for startups.
Each of the three Challenges carries a A$15,000 cash prize. The overall winner will be given the chance to run a pilot with Visa and receive a A$50,000 cash prize. A ‘People’s Choice’ prize of A$5,000 will be voted on pitch day by audience members. Details at vi.sa/TEI.
