We just came back from the Money20/20 hackathon in Vegas. For those who don’t know it, this event brings the entire fintech developer community under one roof for 24 hours, in order to put together new disruptive payment applications. Just as last year, we had plenty of opportunities to showcase Kill Bill, thanks to the open nature of the platform. But instead of trying to extend Kill Bill, this time, we decided to do something a little different.
Money20/20 2015 hackathon
Ever since we started Kill Bill, Stéphane and I have been talking about what a great a fit it would be for small Yoga Studios. Surprisingly enough, most of them still manage attendance on pieces of paper (you typically have to sign a sheet before practice) and recurring billing is often done by hand (i.e. once a month, you need to come with your credit card). There are a few leaders in the industry trying to solve that problem (and similar ones for gyms, spas, etc.), but the solutions offered are expensive, too complicated (some features are available on the mobile app, others on the website) and the UX is overwhelmed by extra features, most often unneeded (scheduling, reporting, marketing, etc.).
For this year’s hackathon, we developped a solution for this market: The Pink Mat. The Pink Mat is a mobile Point of Sale system, running on any iOS and Android system (we expect studios to typically install it on an iPad).
The Pink Mat leaderboard
New customers can come in and self-register by scanning their credit card. They can then select either one-off passes (such as a 10 Class Card) or a recurring subscription (e.g. monthly unlimited).
The Pink Mat register
Once registered, they are handed off personal QR codes, which would be taped in the back of their mat. This code lets them check-in in the studio, access their balance, and pause or renew their subscription. There is no separate website nor log-in to worry about, everything runs on the device.
The Pink Mat good
The Pink Mat bad
On the technology side, the app was developed using React Native. We used card.io to scan the credit cards (the final product could offer Apple Pay and Android Pay) and react-native-camera to handle QR codes (we wanted to use iBeacon instead, but the hardware we had for the event was too old). Finally, we leveraged SecureNet, WorldPay’s payment gateway, to store credit cards directly from the app (Kill Bill was already integrated with SecureNet’s vault to trigger payments and refunds).
We had quite some fun playing with these new technologies and in the 24-hour coding period, we managed to build a fully featured product. All that is needed for a merchant to get started is an instance of Kill Bill and a SecureNet merchant account. So, who wants to disrupt the Yoga industry?
Money20/20 2015 hackathon pitch
