Royal Canadian Mint Announces Start Of Public Vote For Popular Choice Award in MintChip™ Developer Challenge

Back in April, Royal Canadian Mint sent invitation to iOS developers to join the MintChip™ Developer Challenge, asking them to create an innovate digital payment app using MintChip technology. The contest entries ran though July 18, 2012 and today, the Royal Canadian Mint has announced the start of the public voting for the popular choice award in the $50,000 challenge.

Below is the full press release:

Ottawa, Ontario – August 15, 2012 – The Royal Canadian Mint is pleased to invite members of the public to cast their votes for the Popular Choice Award as part of the judging of submissions received by the MintChip™ Developer Challenge. The judging period and public voting, which opened today, continues until September 12, with winners to be announced on September 24 and more than $50,000 worth of prizes to be awarded later in the fall.

“The Mint is extremely pleased with the enthusiasm and creativity shown by the developer community for the MintChip™ Challenge,” said Ian E. Bennett, President and CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint. “All 500 of the developer kits were distributed within the first four days of the Challenge and we have now received many interesting and innovative ideas for possible uses of the MintChip™ digital currency technology.”

The MintChip™ digital currency employs innovative technology, for which the Mint has prototypes and eight patents pending in all major world markets, and could be the digital equivalent of the coins Canadians use every day to carry out financial transactions with retailers and with each other. It uses a secure chip to hold electronic value and a secure protocol to transfer electronic value from one chip to another.

The MintChip™ Developer Challenge began on April 4 when developers from across North America were invited to test the technology as part of the continuing research and development of MintChip™ and to determine its applicability to the current marketplace. The results of the Developer Challenge, which is being conducted on behalf of the Mint by ChallengePost, will form part of the Mint’s ongoing evaluation of possible next steps in the development of the MintChip™ technology.

In addition to the Popular Choice Award, winners in five other categories –Best Overall app, Best Person-to-Person app, Best Business-to-Consumer app, Best Micropayment app and the Large Organization Recognition Award – will be selected by a seven-member panel of judges that consists of Mr. Bennett and 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; and Amanda Lang, Senior Business Correspondent for CBC News and Anchor of The Lang & O’Leary Exchange.

All of the submissions can be seen in the Application Gallery at MintChipChallenge.com. In order to vote for the Popular Choice Award, members of the public who have not already done can vote now after creating a free account with ChallengePost.

For those who have voted already, let us know which application you voted for!

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