Royal Canadian Mint Reveals Winners of MintChip Challenge
Back in April the Royal Canadian Mint launched a challenge in which developers built digital payment apps on major platforms, including the desktop and mobile web, that used the MintChip as a digital currency. The idea is that the MintChip becomes a virtual currency embedded into smartphones and the cloud that enables secure “microtransactions” without the need for a plastic card or cash.
Today, the winners were announced. The winner of the “Best Overall Application” went to MintWallet by developer Coronox. The app was built on a Nokia Windows Phone device as opposed to the more popular iPhone and Android operating systems.
MintWallet also won Best Person-to-Person App. FlashCash won Best Business-to-Consumer app. Pennies a Day won Best Micropayment app. And Mini Checkout won the Popular Choice Award. The Royal Canadian Mint awarded more than $50,000 in prizes to the winners, including solid pure gold.
A demo of the award winning MintWallet app.
”The submissions we received for the Developer Challenge showed the unbelievable creativity of the North American developer community and the depth of its passion for bringing the MintChip™ concept to life,” said Ian E. Bennett, President and CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint. “I would like to congratulate the winners and all those who submitted many interesting and innovative ideas for possible uses of this technology.”
Winners were selected by a seven-member panel of judges that consisted of Osama Bedier, Vice President of Payments, Google; David Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion; Bob Borchers, General Partner, Opus Capital; David Crow, Chief Marketing Officer, Maintenance Assistant Inc.; Jeff King, Senior Director X.commerce Platform Partnerships, eBay; Amanda Lang, Senior Business Correspondent for CBC News and Anchor of The Lang & O’Leary Exchange and the Mint’s President and CEO, Ian E. Bennett.
The digital payments space has been booming recently. Canadian-born companies like PayFirma and NetSecure are already active in the mobile payments industry, not to mention American counterparts such as Square, as well as some failed ideas such as the Bitcoin.
