PayPal Launches Developer Challenge
PayPal announced the PayPal X Developer Challenge by asking developers "to solve the fundamental problems people face when trying to pay or get paid." PayPal is offering prizes totaling $75,000 in cash and $75,000 in waived fees to winners in the Challenge. Contestants must build their applications using the PayPal X application programming interfaces (APIs). The challenge: create the most innovative payment application for businesses in areas such as services, social media, gaming, mobile and consumer electronics.
The first and second prizes are $50,000 and $25,000 in cash respectively and $50,000 and $25,000 in waived PayPal transaction fees. To enter the PayPal X Developer Challenge, log on to http://www.x.com, read the contest rules, and start coding. The deadline for final submissions is Feb. 1, 2010. The winners will be announced in March. Entries must include a link to a demo application and an accompanying video describing how it would work.
Finalists will be determined by popular vote on x.com and a panel of distinguished judges including eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; PayPal president Scott Thompson; general partner of Andreessen/Horowitz, Marc Andreessen; and Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, who will choose the top two prize winners.
"PayPal is putting developers in the driver's seat to enable new and emerging business models for their innovations," said Osama Bedier, PayPal's vice president of platform and emerging technology. "We're challenging developers to take PayPal X for a spin. And while the prize money is certainly an incentive, the real reward will be making payments easy, for the very first time, for an entirely new generation of applications built by our developer community."
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