Pay 2.0 – an Idea from Pakistan Gets into Cisco’s I-Prize Finals
Syed Imtiaz Ahmed has reached into the finals of Cisco’s ‘I-Prize’, a global innovation contest, for his mobile commerce idea dubbed as Pay 2.0.
Cisco I-Prize is a global competition in which entrepreneurs submit proposals and collaborate to create the fundamental idea for Cisco’s next billion-dollar business.
The team with the winning idea will be hired by Cisco, their idea will be implemented by Cisco itself and furthermore it will receive a grand prize of US$250,000.
Cisco I-Prize started in January this year where the first round ran up to 30th April and Pay 2.0 was selected as one of 32 semifinalists and then ultimately for the finals. Pay 2.0 and eight other ideas out of 1,000+ ideas and 3,000+ contestants from 156 countries made it to the finals.
Imtiaz was solely contesting till the semi finals when Asif Raza and Shakeel Tabassam, based in Finland and his long time friends joined him.
Imtiaz Ahmed, Asif Raza and Shakeel Tabassam will be demoing their presentations to Cisco top management on June 21st from Dubai and Finland using Cisco’s Tele-presence solution. Winner will be announced by John Chambers and Marthin De Beer at Cisco Live on June 29, 2010.
What is Pay 2.0?
Pay2.0 is the Next Gen Cash-less Solution to pay and get paid – Online & OFFLINE. This model is applicable for Person-to-Person, Person-to-Business, Business-to-person, Business-to-Business mPayments/mCommerce.
Pay 2.0 will be ‘Alternate Payment Processing Service’ for internet transactions like Paypal (even more basic, but using prepaid cards instead of CCs). In later stages it can be extended as a mCommerce solution and Branch-less Bank functioning as an alternate eCommerce /mCommerce /mBanking system like OboPay.com.
Though the solution was conceptualized with a Pakistan focus but is universal in appeal and scalable worldwide. Pay 2.0 will be unique in that it’s a hybrid solution for eCom-mCom-mBank transactions/services and utilizes prepaid scratch cards or EasyLoad (as in cellphones) method as primary mode of account recharge.
For complete deals on Pay 2.0 you can download this file (PDF – 248 KB) or visit this page (requires registration)
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Great work!
good to hear this.
Aamir Bhai yar app great ho itni information kasy collect kerty ho. Good job.
It is really Fantastic to Hear Pakistan Rocks
Great Work , They will win InshaAllah, Proud to be Pakistani
Great!
Finally, good to see this news here :)
Keep up the great work Imtiaz Bahi!!
We are all proud of you!
Hello,
Great work Pay2.0 team.
I really appreciate that.
We must encourage our Pakistani entrepreneurs’…
Keep it up the great work guys …
I pray for your success…
Please let me know, if I could help you in any way. It will be my pleasure.
Tariq Khan
Bad news, so far he couldn’t get the visa for Dubai where he has to present himself by tomorrow otherwise he might get disqualified.
OK, he just got it :)
Alhamdulillah!
Guys, let’s pray together for his success now.
May Allah give him success.
I am afraid of a bias decision. Let’s hope for the bset ;)
Aamir Bhai,
Imtiaz Ahmed and team will definitely win this content. This seems a wonderful idea. I will check their presentation in details.
Thanks
We all are hopeful and we all are praying for him…
INSHALLAH.. Everything will be fine…
ALLAH Almighty help him…
Tariq Khan
Inshallah. If they win, It will be a huge benefit for Pakistan, and even if they don’t, the idea has reached finals, it will be taken into consideration for imlementation by many companies.
I do not want take away what Mr. Imtiaz Ahmad & his team have achieved. I wish them best of luck and hope that they won the finals which will be a big achievement in itself.
All I want to say is that idea is not new and is already being used in a small urban part of Islamabad. In mid 2008, my brother and I have worked on it and since JAN 2009 we have a small scale working model of it being used but not with its full features …….. Our vision is same as Mr. Imtiaz has presented and we even have introduced targeted advertisement (you subscribe for things you are interested in e.g. car/mobile phone/land/houses etc. and system will notify when and where thing are available in your area) ……. currently we have just over 200 direct clients of the system but indirectly over half a million ppl. have used it without knowing it. After seeing it in use many individuals have shown their interest in it but due to lack man power and monopoly of big players we are having hard time to extend it ….. Mr. Imtiaz has chosen the right path to present the idea to big companies and I am sure once the big guns will support it then it might grow faster in western countries
Idea is very simple and good and its applications are countless. I am sure western countries might adopt it but in 3rd world countries like Pakistan where security and basic infrastructure is very poor (unless it changes over night), I do not see it growing … at least not on its full strength …. even in western countries , many ppl. want to have cash/paper money …. I myself live in France and work in switzerland and I can tell that big % of these ppl still have not adopted credit card to it full potential …. they only use it for online shopping but for physical shopping they do prefer hard cash/check books ……
Anyway, I will be happy to see it being implement in any country just to feel proude that it was Pakistan who has given this world something :-)
Can you share product details
[...] What is Pay 2.0? [...]
AOA
thats a great idea I think in case of unfavourable condition other Pakistani or multinational companies should go for it.
Best of luck to the Pay2.0 team, but really where is the originality in any of this? It’s a simple m-payment/m-wallet/stored-value-account idea. And there is nothing “OFFLINE” about the transaction examples mentioned. Using prepaid cards to top up your wallet, and then using a Pay2 Server as an exchange for transactions…how is it offiline? Just because the account is not being managed through a bank does not make it offline. I’ll give you an example of an offline transaction. An offline transaction could be in a case where a smart card or a mobile phone would have credit/money/units on it. A subscriber would go to an outlet and without any internet access, the subscriber would be able to transfer the money to the merchant. For example, this is what may happen in contactless (NFC) cards: the subscriber goes to the shop and waves his handset in front of the shopkeeper’s handset/reader, which in turn may not be connected to any back end. In practice, a 100% offline transaction is impossible because in the first place topping up an account (EasyLoad) itself requires a transaction which will eventually reflect in a bank somewhere. So my question remains the same: what is so unique about this Pay2.0 idea? Is it presenting a model/method for offline transactions? How is it different from what MTN is doing, or what’s happening in Kenya, or what FINO is doing in India, or what Avea+Garanti+Gemalto are about to do in Turkey?
- you go to a Pay 2.0 retailer and buy 1000Rs worth of scratch card and load it in your Pay 2.0 account by sending *RechargeCode*CardPIN#
- now after having a nice tea in PC you use your mobile to pay the bill e.g. by sending this *PayCode*Pay2IdOfReceipent*Amount#
and in reply you get and 4 digit pin to verify your request and you send *VerifyService*Code# to complete the transaction
No internet used, so would you call it an offline transaction?
Nope. Because when you enter a USSD code, such as the one you’ve mentioned, it goes and hits a back-end (a USSD Gateway), which in turn either hits the IN, or some account management system which would debit the amount from this user. So yes, I stand corrected on my use of the term internet in my previous post, I meant network. If at the back you need to connect to any exchange, gateway, server etc., it doesn’t remain offline. Offline = disconnected mode.
FUNNY …. I think this whole Cisco I-Prize thing is a joke ….. after reading the post here at propakistani I signed up for I-Prize to read the rest of the ideas and noticed that Idea like the following also make to the finals
“Geoffrey Moore invites all innovators around the world to participate in the Cisco I-Prize”
and this is full context of the idea. So I do not know how serious is competition is???? :-)
great work man.
really want to pay tribute to that person.
Unfortunaitly Pay 2.0 did not win, the idea which won the competition is “CISCO: Life Account”.
By the way, I should also add that “Pay 2.0″ ended up 4th in the competition which is a great great achievement. There were more than 800 ideas and coming 4th in them is very big achievement.
Congratulation Imtiaz & team, we wish you all the best for future.
[...] What is Pay 2.0? [...]