Give me a good idea for a payments system and we can win $150k

[DRU]

PayPal is running a contest right now for developers to create applications using their new API systems they just opened up. I'm a certified PayPal developer that's been working with PayPal's API's for about 6 years now and their new stuff is really exciting.

Anyway, I'd like to submit as many applications as I can. Obviously, the more ideas I can include the better chance I have to win the contest with one of them.

The new systems include the following...

Pay Anyone - It's now real simple to submit payments from cell phones or from web apps using the PayPal API's. Payments can be sent to a single receiver or up to 6 receivers and the money will be automatically split. The application can specify who pays the fees...primary or secondary receivers.

Preapproved Payments - The ability to setup preapproved payments with an application so that you can then pay anybody using PayPal with nothing more than a 4 digit PIN. You don't ahve to sign into PayPal to make the payment anymore. Makes it a lot quicker. You can also create automated payments that occur daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.

Adaptive Accounts / Authentication - It's now really easy to create PayPal accounts from within an application's flow. Also, you can use PayPal's login system to authenticate users of your web site or application. PayPal user authentication is much more reliable than something like Facebook Connect because of all of the verification procedures you have to go through for a PayPal account. That way your application can know that this person really is who they say they are.

I'd love to hear any ideas you guys can come up with on how moving money could be made easier. Examples of how people are using these new API's already are things like the following...

- Preapproval systems for renters/tenants so payments can be made automatically using PayPal.
- Affiliate systems where payments are automatically split between up to 6 different receivers (ie. web site owner, drop-shipper, affiliate referral) all within the same payment.
- Send money from cell phone to pay friends back for lunch/dinner/movie/etc.
- System to split up a single payment from a travel customer to the hotel, airline, car rental, and any other 3rd party a package might include.
- Easily send money to friends from within MySpace, Facebook, etc.
- System for contractors to make a single payment and have it split between all their material suppliers automatically.
- Expand a restaurant finder that users Google maps so that you can find a place, see their menu, and pay for items using PayPal's new Preapproved Payment system (all you do is enter your 4 digit PIN to submit a payment) from any device

Those are just a few samples but the sky is the limit. These new PayPal systems make it possible to automate payments and send money to people really easily in ways that didn't exist. So throw ideas you can at me about what types of payment systems might make things easier for personal or business transactions and I'll develop it. If the idea wins we'll split the money and run with it!

The way the prize works is the following...

1st Place - $50k cash + 1 year's worth of no fees on your PayPal up to $50k.
2nd Place - $25k cash + 1 year's worth of no fees on your PayPal up to $25k.

So, if you with both that's $150k in prize value, and a single application could actually win both 1st and 2nd place.

Any ideas/takers?

[Rain Man]

Can I have a global credit card manager that takes all of my credit cards and then whenever I swipe it for payment, it automatically figures out which one to pay with that will give me the most frequent flyer miles or bonus points and pays with that one? Is that within the scope?

[Rain Man]

Or how about a tracking system that lets me know how much I spend on items in comparison to other people of my age and income level? It would have to conglomerate all my spending like Microsoft Money does, but better.


And in addition, or maybe instead, it can somehow warn me if I'm going over budget on a particular spending category in a given month, while I'm paying.

[DRU]

Can I have a global credit card manager that takes all of my credit cards and then whenever I swipe it for payment, it automatically figures out which one to pay with that will give me the most frequent flyer miles or bonus points and pays with that one? Is that within the scope?

Thanks for the quick idea! That's exactly the type of thing I'm looking for. One of the new things PayPal introduced was the ability to turn your flyer miles into PayPal cash real easily, however, they haven't released as much documentation about that as they have for some of the other stuff yet.

I'll have to research that a little bit and see what I can come up. My immediate hesitation is that we'd need some sort of single card that we generate for customers that would contain an ID so that when swiped it can pull all the stored cards from the solution and figure out which one to use. It's a big project but definitely within the scope.

I'll look into that a little bit and get back with you. Thanks for the great start on ideas! :)

[DRU]

Or how about a tracking system that lets me know how much I spend on items in comparison to other people of my age and income level? It would have to conglomerate all my spending like Microsoft Money does, but better.

That's another good idea, however, that one wouldn't really fall into this contest because it wouldn't utilize the new payments system. It'd be more of a reporting type of solution. It is a good idea, though, and could definitely be implemented in some way and bring in some money whether it was eligible for the contest or not.

Another good one. I'm keeping a list of people and ideas they provide. You've got 2 good ones!

[Rain Man]

Is there any way you can do a contract through the payment system? For example, as a small business I sign contracts with other small businesses. While 99 percent of them pay, I got stiffed by one company that basically just decided that they weren't doing well and didn't want to pay. Another company was struggling and eventually paid us, but it took them a year and they were obviously taking their own paycheck and letting me cover the cost of waiting. With a paypal contract I'd get paid at a preset time as long as their account was at a preset balance.

Maybe that's not feasible, but it'd sure be nice to be able to know that those two companies were lying to me when they kept telling me that they "had a check in the mail". Is there another solution to the problem that's better?

[DRU]

Is there any way you can do a contract through the payment system? For example, as a small business I sign contracts with other small businesses. While 99 percent of them pay, I got stiffed by one company that basically just decided that they weren't doing well and didn't want to pay. Another company was struggling and eventually paid us, but it took them a year and they were obviously taking their own paycheck and letting me cover the cost of waiting. With a paypal contract I'd get paid at a preset time as long as their account was at a preset balance.

Maybe that's not feasible, but it'd sure be nice to be able to know that those two companies were lying to me when they kept telling me that they "had a check in the mail". Is there another solution to the problem that's better?

What you could do for something like that is setup a system where you authorize the total amount and then capture funds later. You could auth the entire amount, then capture a down payment and any other payments from that original auth. If the funds weren't available the auth would fail.

It's not completely fail-safe because authorizations are only good up to a certain number of days depending on the buyer's bank. It would give you more of a chance than just waiting on a check, though. Contact me directly if you're interested in discussing that further.