Royal Canadian Mint Opens Public Vote for Popular Choice Award in MintChip Developer Challenge

^[1]The Royal Canadian Mint ^[1] is pleased to invite members of the public to cast their votes for the Popular Choice Award ^[2] as part of the judging of submissions received by the MintChip™ Developer Challenge ^[3]. 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 will be selected in five other categories:

• Best Overall app
• Best Person-to-Person app
• Best Business-to-Consumer app
• Best Micropayment app
• Large Organization Recognition Award

The seven-member panel of judges tasked with choosing the winners:

• Ian E. Bennett, President and CEO, The Royal Canadian Mint
• 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

All of the submissions can be seen in the Application Gallery ^[2] on the MintChip Challenge website ^[3]. In order to vote for the Popular Choice Award, members of the public who have not already done so will need to create a free account with ChallengePost ^[4].