‘MintChip’ Challenge Winners Announced by the Royal Canadian Mint

Back in April of this year, the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) introduced a contest for developers to create a digital payment system using their new MintChip technology. With voting taking place just over a week later, the RCM has announced the winners of the contest today:

Winners in the following categories are as follows:

• Best Overall App – Grand Prize MintWallet; Second Prize Pennies a Day; Third Prize FlashCash: Pay all at once!
• Best Person-to-Person App – MintWallet
• Best Business-to-Consumer App – FlashCash: Pay all at once!
• Best Micropayment App – Pennies a Day
• Large Organization Recognition Award – DonRiver MintChip App (iOS)
• Popular Choice Award – Mini Checkout (public voting)

The grand prize went to the app MintWallet, an app developed on Windows Phone for the Nokia Lumia. The lone iOS app that won was the DonRiver MintChip app, in the category for Large Organization Recognition award. Here’s a video of the app below:

Here were the judges from the seven member panel:

• 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
• Mint’s President and CEO, Ian E. Bennett.

Over $50,000 worth of prizes will be awarded to the the winners this Fall, in glorious, glorious gold. No word or time frame was released on when we will see the implementation of these apps for digital payments.