RevvPay
Tired of the hassle of pulling out your wallet, digging through your purse, or having to use an automated plastic swiping machine every time you make payments while in your car? Ideator Lexi Sprague is working hard to make these annoyances a thing of the past.
With co-founders Chinmayi Sharma and Richard Malone, Sprague is in the process of launching RevvPay, an app that uses license plate recognition technology to change the way people in their cars pay for goods and services.
Interestingly, she came up with the idea while attending a hackathon at Draper University, where participants were challenged to come up with technology that would benefit humans based on the theme of living forever.
“We built RevvPay around the concept that self-driving cars should be able to pay for themselves,” said Sprague. “Our goal is to build a network of franchises that will enable simple, fast integration with many forms of detection to build a holistic, hands-free payment system. This will save merchants money and make the checkout process faster and more personal for customers everywhere.”
What’s the Problem?
Despite advances in technology, customer checkout still tends to be a slow and inefficient process that annoys customers and costs merchants and retailers millions of dollars every year. Companies must still hire and train employees to handle the transaction, and customers still wait in line, especially in drive-thru lanes and other places where payment is made from the car.
What’s the Big Idea?
RevvPay uses license plate recognition technology to initiate hands-free payments for auto-related activities such as fast food drive-thru lanes, parking lots, gas stations, hotel check-ins, and renting a car. Customers will no longer have to dig through their wallets or purses to pull out their credit cards, and the system will save merchants money by giving them flexible discounts on card processing. RevvPay will also help reduce their marketing spend by enabling direct-to-consumer advertising from the merchants.
Where Is It Headed?
The RevvPay team is currently working on building a system that will further the trend toward “digital wallets” by allowing smart payment solutions to plug into RevvPay’s network of merchants. In addition to saving merchants money, the ultimate goal is to also save customers time while making them feel truly cared for and appreciated by the companies that use RevvPay.
Early on, ongoing turnover presented a challenge as original members from the hackathon decided whether or not to continue working on the project. Since then, the leadership team has coalesced into a solid group, and is now looking to bring aboard an experienced CTO with the skills to build the initial code structure.
“We have some good programmers, but a project this complex needs a core technical leader,” said Sprague. “If you can recommend someone or have any ideas on where to look, connect with us on Ideator or visit our website at RevvPay.com.
