Start-ups Invited to Dive Into the Visa Developer Sandbox as Part of Second Annual Everywhere Initiative

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) today invited start-ups to compete in the company’s second annual The Everywhere Initiative. In partnership with start-up ecosystem company, KITE, Visa is posing three real-life business challenges to the start-up community to create innovative solutions that solve Visa business problems and drive the future of commerce. The selected winner of each challenge will receive $50,000 to be used towards the real-world production of their solution and mentorship from Visa marketing, product and technology teams over a year-long period to help bring their solutions to life.

The Visa Everywhere Initiative was created in 2015 to drive strong business outcomes by harnessing the creativity and talent from within the start-up community. Last year’s contest focused on developing new marketing and communications approaches that would engage millennials and drive adoption of Visa Checkout. This year, there are three challenges:

• The Everywhere API Challenge: Use any relevant Visa APIs available through the Visa Developer Platform to build a payment solution that can drive more powerful commerce experiences for customers within an existing app or via a new app.
• The Everywhere Global Events Challenge: Creatively leverage today’s popular social media channels to engage fans at Visa-sponsored events leveraging advertising technology, influencer networks and other related platforms.
• The Everywhere Cardless Challenge: Imagine a world without physical cards and explain how to encourage Visa accountholders to load their Visa cards onto every digital payment platform they use.

“With payment and marketing innovation happening at break-neck speed, Visa is once again asking the start-up community for their best ideas to help move the industry forward,” said Shiv Singh, senior vice president, digital and marketing transformation at Visa. “With Visa’s rich set of APIs and SDKs, we are especially excited to see how our open platform can help fuel additional payment innovation with this year’s challenges.”

Visa will begin accepting submissions for the three challenges on April 28th. Finalists will be invited to present to a panel of Visa business and technology leaders who will determine the winners of each challenge. The winning prototypes will then be showcased in Visa innovation centers around the world including Dubai, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.

API Preview in Austin

To kick-off this year’s challenge, five start-ups participated in a mid-March competition “The Everywhere API Challenge” at the Visa Everywhere Lounge in Austin. The start-ups - Msg.ai, Ledge, Eventbase, Knocki, and Hiku – presented their ideas to a panel of Visa technology leaders, with LA-based Ledge, a mobile finance platform for P2P lending, taking the top spot. Ledge received a $25,000 award to build a prototype that integrates Visa Direct to power the P2P exchange of funds for Ledge campaigns.

In addition to the challenge, Visa is also working with Kellogg School of Management, the business school of Northwestern University, to further payment innovation and digital commerce ideas in the classroom. To find out more regarding Visa’s partnership with Kellogg School of Management visit Visa.com.

“We’ve already seen five outstanding ideas from a diverse group of start-ups in Austin,” said Singh. “With Visa China running its own Everywhere Initiative competition this year, and adding our student initiative, we look forward to growing The Everywhere Initiative to start-ups, students and developers all across the world who want to help us build the future of payments and engage consumers in new and dynamic ways.”

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world's most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, pay ahead of time with prepaid or pay later with credit products. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/about-visa, visacorporate.tumblr.com and @VisaNews.

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