PaidPiper, a startup which will debut at the CTIA Wireless show in the week, is developing a mobile cash transfer system suited to developed economies where the credit-card infrastructure is dominant.
Money transfers via mobile are common in several developing countries where ancient banking and credit cards are scarce. PaidPiper, based mostly in San Francisco, is putting credit-card numbers at the middle of its payment system, that is because of become obtainable this summer. It says these is easier each to offer and to pay than gift cards or virtual coupons. the corporate is using APIs (application programming interfaces) from MasterCard WorldWide, that the corporate is creating obtainable to 3rd parties to develop new uses for credit-card infrastructure.
With PaidPiper, retailers and makes are ready to offer customers incentives by issuing distinctive MasterCard numbers on the spot, either personally or via the mobile network. customers will be ready to raise the businesses for incentives, that a vendor will deliver in exchange for a client action like filling out a survey, said Atif Hussein, PaidPiper’s CEO. He introduced the concept at Mobile internet and Apps World, a aspect conference held in New Orleans on Monday, the day before CTIA begins.
PaidPiper could be a SaaS (software-as-a-service) supplier of customer-relationship management, Hussein said. The startup used MasterCard’s MoneySend API to develop its own API, that it’ll use because the basis of a service that third parties offers underneath their own brands.
PaidPiper can demonstrate its system with an app of its own creating, called, Ok’d, that it expects to possess obtainable free for Apple iOS within the middle of this summer. The gap screen of the app has an “Ask” and a “Give” button. As an example of how it might work, Hussein said a client who saw a videogame he liked in an exceedingly store might put off his phone, faucet the “Ask” button, and raise for $10 as an incentive to shop for the sport.
If the maker of the sport participated in PaidPiper’s service, it might then raise the patron to fill out a survey in exchange for the $10. when the client stuffed it out, the sport maker would use PaidPiper to possess a credit-card range issued to him. That range would merely show up on the consumer’s phone, and if he wished to shop for something within the future, either on-line or in an exceedingly store, he would offer the amount or show it to a clerk who would sort it in.
Consumers also can download the Ok’d app and issue card numbers themselves. as an example, a parent might provides a teen-ager a selected add of cash on the fly, from her mobile to the child’s, and will even limit where that money may be spent, in keeping with Hussein. PaidPiper will try this by “geofencing” the utilization of the cardboard to a selected space, like one store or all locations of a given retail chain, he said. Alternatively, a client might scan the barcode of a product in an exceedingly store and raise somebody else — a parent or a boss — for variety to acquire it.
PaidPiper also can be used to offer incentives personally, from phone to phone, that is good for tiny businesses, the corporate said. instead of having to follow up an in-store encounter with a later contact via e-mail, a merchant will reward the client immediately, PaidPiper said.
Though the thought of typing in long credit-card numbers could appear cumbersome, PaidPiper’s service takes advantage of a huge infrastructure that’s already ubiquitous in most advanced economies. as an example, MasterCard has one.7 billion cards in use these days, issued by twenty two,000 totally different banks, and MasterCard is accepted at thirty three million locations round the world, said David Butler, MasterCard’s vp and open API product manager.
The PaidPiper system is prepared to become additional streamlined for in-store use when NFC (near-field computing) becomes additional widely obtainable in phones and point-of-sale systems, Hussein said.