The Israeli start-up company PCENTRA has developed a system that allows smart cards to be loaded with credit, and operates the Rav-Ko online service.
PCENTRA is one of the eight companies that reached the finals of the recently held Visa's Everywhere innovation competition. She made it to the finals out of almost 200 European companies. The participants in the competition had to present the payment solutions they offer in three categories, using the Visa API interfaces, with the winning teams even getting the opportunity to use them. PCENTRA competed in the smart transportation solutions category.
"Public transportation is an area where many transactions are still done in cash." Moti Maimon, CEO of PCENTRA explains. But today people want to top up the multi-line card online, like they pay for many other services. We are developing a mobile payment solution for transportation for this need.
For this, knowledge is required both in the field of payments, and in the field of transportation, and of course - in digital data security. When we talk about transportation, we are talking about a lot of money rolling in, a significant part of which is public money. Any solution for the domain should be secure. We operate a multi-line online service in Israel, which has made a quiet revolution in the last year and a half in everything related to payments for public transportation in Israel. For the first time, you can actually pay for public transportation using your smartphone.
"We work under existing regulation. We took the regulation and developed a solution that allows you to make mobile payments without adding to the existing equipment. Beyond this solution, we have other solutions such as QR cards for special trips".
Funding: "The reason for our participation in Visa's competition is the possibility of rapid expansion: our solution is suitable for more than 80% of the cities in the world and is applicable immediately. Therefore, we are looking for a global player with common interests and with a geographical distribution. Visa's goal is to move from cash to credit cards and our goal is to allow users more convenient and modern forms of payment."
Oded Salomi, CEO of Visa in Israel said: PCENTRA was among 8 Israeli companies that advanced to the final stage and competed for the prizes against 7 other young companies from around Europe. The competition was tough, but the contestants stood out with their innovative ideas, advanced technologies and advanced solutions, which will change the way people buy and use money."
Bill Gajda, senior vice president for innovation and strategic partners in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Visa, said: "We have been looking for, and we continue to look for, a wide variety of fintech solutions. In places like Tel Aviv, Berlin and London there are many companies that work in these fields.
Israel is strong in many technologies, not only in everything traditionally related to security. Israel is starting to become a world leader in the field of biometrics and now a vibrant Bitcoin community is also emerging there. In general, there are many good fintech companies in Israel that we want to work with and accelerate their development."
In order to contact Visa's innovation division in Israel, click HERE.
2 תגובות
Why, until a few weeks ago, I would go to the website, connect the device to the computer
(windows xp, firefox or chrome) and charger and today under the same conditions and the same
Computer in no way allows me to do this - throws a comment such as "You do not have permissions."
As an administrator", and if I manage to get to the loading screen at all, the "loading" tag is faded
and does not allow action. From correspondence with Rav Ko I understood that changes were made
in the software (and it turns out probably not to our advantage, the senior citizens).
By the way, I have been "stuck" in the problem for about two weeks.
Ami
I don't understand what the problem is at all and why to this day there is no such option.
Every bus driver today has a device that is in direct contact with the network of the monopoly called Revco, and also with GPS, what is the problem that the same device will also check and perform credit card transactions? What special technology is not needed for this today?