PayPal Celebrates the Innovation of Its Developer Community, Names iConcessionStand Grand Prize Winner
SAN JOSE, Calif.--PayPal announced the winners of its second PayPal X Developer Challenge at the close of its PayPal X Innovate 2010 developer conference Wednesday. iConcessionStand, which has introduced a new way to shop and pay for products on mobile devices at live events, was chosen by a panel of leading venture capitalists to receive the Grand Prize valued at $100,000. Nine other developers captured best-of-category X Awards, as well as community and audience favorite awards, for the creative implementations of PayPal’s APIs for an app or service.
“The winners of our second Developer Challenge have created some of the best ideas showcasing the future of money that I've ever seen,” said Naveed Anwar, senior director of PayPal’s developer network. “Our first developer challenge was a springboard for those winners to earn more recognition, win other contests, secure venture funding and best of all, attract more customers. We expect a similar road to success for these winners.”
iConcessionStand is a mobile app that helps consumers skip standing in long concession lines at live events. Food, beverages and merchandise orders can be made within the app and paid for with a PayPal account. Customers are alerted when the order is ready for pickup or are served by runners, so they don’t miss out on any important plays. The app is available for download in the Apple App Store and Android Market.
“PayPal’s Mobile Payments Library was an integral component in the development of our app,” said Kenji Kato, co-founder of iConcessionStand. “The PayPal X open platform helped us eliminate the standing in line that we all dread at live events. PayPal’s technology makes first-of-its-kind apps like ours possible.”
The complete list of winners included:
PayPal launched the second Developer Challenge in June 2010, narrowing the field to 10 finalists on Oct. 14. Judges included Scott Guilfoyle, CTO of PayPal; Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital; Dave McClure of 500 Startups; and Dana Stalder of Matrix Partners.
“We were struck by the range of applications,” said Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups. “We saw great ideas for mobile payments and micropayments – for lending to friends, creating widgets that sell, and even creative ways to make donations. It's great to see developers creating all kinds of innovative payment solutions on the PayPal platform.”
Details around PayPal X’s next Developer Challenge will be revealed in January 2011.
Innovate 2010 is the only developer conference dedicated to payments. The conference was held at Moscone West on Oct. 26-27. It brought together 2,500 developers and industry experts to explore three main areas that are changing the way we pay: the phenomenal growth of mobile payments, the rise of social commerce and the move to Internet-enabled local payments.
Follow PayPal on Twitter: @PayPal and @PayPalX. For additional information on PayPal X, please visit www.x.com.
About PayPal
PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 90 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY) company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later.
More information about the company can be found at PayPal.com. PayPal is headquartered in San Jose, California and its international headquarters is located in Singapore.