Worldline, the European market leader in payment and transaction services, proudly announces the winners of its e-Payments Challenge 2019, the industry’s unique hackathon that speeds up the innovation-to-business cycle. The competition showed an extraordinary level of professionalism amongst the Fintechs and produced spot-on solutions to a multitude of industry challenges. Best examples are OneVisage that won the Grand Jury award and Cloudasset, awarded with a special prize.

The e-Payments Challenge is an open exchange forum which brings together Fintech start-ups, with Worldline customers and its own experts for 3 intense days of co-creation. 25 Fintech startups competed mid-September in Frankfurt on 15 challenges set by 11 clients to design solutions using Worldline assets.

The results give evidence of the effectiveness of Worldline’s unique co-creation recipe: the hands-on interaction in the triangle of competing Fintech teams, senior representatives from some of the most established industry players such as Accor, Erste Bank and OP finance, and Worldline’s own experts demonstrating the technology on site secured high-quality solutions. 

Marc-Henri Desportes, Deputy CEO of Worldline, said: “The e-Payments Challenge this year was a great success and the most productive melting pot of customers, Worldline experts and Fintechs. The results are impressive, as most of the solutions that emerged from the intense collaboration between startups, clients and our experts are much more than creative ideas: they deliver clear solutions with full implementation potential. No wonder our clients found the Challenge extremely insightful and they are now keen to move to the next stage in the co-creation process.”

Awarded solutions answer industry challenges of tomorrow

In addition to 15 category winners, the grand jury selected OneVisage, a Swiss startup which aims to become a leading digital identity service provider, for the “Grand Prix” award. Their smart solution helps prevent digital identity theft.

François-Xavier Mille, VP Hotel tools & Payment from ACCOR, is satisfied with the results: “Accor has been sponsoring the e-Payments Challenge for the second time now, and our expectations have been more than met. With Worldline and OneVisage we take user experience and security of 3D authentication to a next level, whereby our customers will have full control of their biometric data.”

Christophe Remillet, CEO of OneVisage: “Our vision is to disrupt the payments industry by introducing 3D facial biometric solutions that consumers can totally control. We are immensely proud of the award and even more about the trust that Accor puts in us to implement the solution. We look forward to deepening our partnership with Worldline and Accor to deliver our solutions and grow the company.”

A special prize was given to Cloudasset, a Finnish Fintech startup and their digital payment platform - P3, for their truly digital “In-Store Instant cards Issuing In-App”, based on a challenge set by a large European bank. Their solution digitizes the flow of finance for very unique customer requirements, in this case an instant in-app credit card issuance service that enables consumers from a specific segment to make credit-based purchases at partner merchants in less than a minute.

Cloudasset also won a second challenge for a fashion retailer, creating a ‘Try Now Pay Later’ service for qualified customers that reduces the cost of returns handling and chargebacks that to date have been an unavoidable expense for retailers.

Hasan Malik, CEO of Cloudasset, said: “We were delighted to have been selected by the grand jury for the special prize for clearly understanding the unique requirements of the challenges and by seamlessly blending Worldline assets with our P3 platform. Besides that, the Worldline e-Payments Challenge was a lot of hard work, fun, networking and little sleep but we are extremely happy that our ideas were appreciated and received with such success.”

Winners of this year’s e-Payments Challenge will have access to the new Booster Program that was launched at the event, potential joint go-to-market with Worldline as well as the opportunity to join Worldline at global events such as the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sibos or the NRF Retail Week in New York.

A win-win-win situation to advance the payments industry

Participating Fintechs were given the opportunity to not only co-create the future of payments but also to network with Worldline’s impressive clients, discover demos for Worldline solutions and attend workshops with more than 70 Worldline experts. The challenges this year consisted of 15 issues such as seamless Customer Experience in payments and authentication, B2B payments, Open Banking, and Cash Management. Worldline also offered its assets and expertise to the Fintech startups to use for solving their clients’ challenges including APIs for e-commerce payments, trusted authentication services, next generation terminals, open banking, XS2A TPP services, blockchain anchoring; offerings in issuing and acquiring services and fraud management; and expertise in R&D and regulations.

The e-Payments Challenge started with a surprising announcement about Worldline’s new “e-Payments Booster Program”. It is an enablement program designed specifically for startups and Fintechs who want to accelerate their business and incorporate trusted and scalable payment functionalities. This program is part of Worldline’s Fintech engagement strategy that will facilitate the access to Worldline’s payments solutions for Fintechs and startups thanks to APIs and special pricing conditions.

For participating customers, the e-Payments Challenge is a great occasion to screen the Fintech market and meet some of the hottest newcomers in the industry.

Alexander Kickinger, Head of Digital and Open Banking at Erste Group Bank AG, confirms:  „The change of perspectives is important for us:  we do not want to judge a FinTech or Startup by their sales presentation only, but want to see how they deal with a concrete task. At the e-Payments Challenge of Worldline we saw them prove their concept within 48 hours, and that is of great value for us.“

Given the great success, the ePayments Challenge is bound to continue. Customers, Fintechs and Worldline as host are looking forward to gaining fresh perspectives, share insights and develop marketable solutions in 2020.