Company: VeriFone, San Jose, CA
Company Description: Founded in 1981, VeriFone is the global leader in secure electronic payment solutions and is present in more than 80 percent of U.S. retailers. VeriFone provides expertise, solutions and services that add value to the point-of-sale with merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems for the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and healthcare vertical markets.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Transportation

Nomination Title: VeriFone's Way2ride

1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

The ability to quickly get in and out of taxi cabs and pay cab fare is critical for passengers and drivers alike—especially in large cities that thrive on speed. Way2ride—a mobile app from VeriFone—solves this problem by enabling passengers to quickly and easily pay for taxi rides with their smartphones. This cloud-based CNP app was debuted in NYC taxi fleets in October 2013 before expanding to Philadelphia taxi fleets. It allows passengers to use their smartphones to quickly and easily pay for cab rides and receive receipts within minutes of the transaction. Passengers can easily download the Way2ride app to their smartphone—even during their ride.

Traditional methods of paying for rides with credit/debit cards is slow: passengers need to find their card and swipe it through a terminal or present it to the driver. Once the payment is accepted, the driver needs to print a receipt, and the passenger needs to indicate a gratuity and sign the receipt. Finally, the driver enters the gratuity and provides a copy of the receipt to the passenger. While this may seem like a rather straight forward process, in busy cities it can be quite tedious and time consuming while parked in traffic or on the side of the road.

Way2ride makes the taxi experience faster and easier by enabling riders to pre-load payment information and preferred tip amounts to their smartphone. Passengers can quickly pay for their ride with a tap of their phone before exiting the cab and getting on with their day. Receipts are emailed to passengers and stored in the app for tagging and expensing of business trips. For cab drivers, faster and more convenient payments not only means improved customer service, but also the ability to quickly get another fare and increase revenue.

Way2ride provides an integrated, PCI compliant payment solution that improves efficiency for fleet operators. It integrates with fleet office technology—shifting the compliance and payment security burden away from fleet owners while enhancing visibility into transactions and pick up/drop off schedules and locations. Additionally, drivers have the option to expand their use of Way2ride to enhance revenues with advertiser-paid media that streams through the digital screen on Way2ride terminals facing passengers during their ride.

Way2ride is built on VeriFone’s open API cloud platform—enabling developers to easily create apps with secure payment, messaging and other value-added services leveraging VeriFone’s mobile commerce network.

Way2ride uses VeriFone’s patented Zoosh sound-based technology to check passengers into their ride, allowing for secure transmission of payment information through the cloud. VeriFone’s first commercial deployment of the Zoosh technology, Way2ride utilizes smartphones’ speakers and microphones to securely exchange encrypted data between devices, allowing app developers to unlock the potential of non-NFC smartphones to deliver single-tap functionality alongside their NFC solutions.

Since Way2ride’s October 2013 debut:

• > 400,000 mobile transactions (>$6 million in fares and gratuities) have been completed using Way2ride
• It has a current annual run rate of $15 million and 1 million transactions
• It has experienced >70,000 downloads and has > 17,000 active users
• > 11,000 cabs in NYC accept Way2ride
• 1400 of the 1600 cabs operating in Philadelphia now accept Way2ride

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2. Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Paul Galant is Chief Executive Officer of VeriFone and a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining VeriFone, Paul served as the CEO of Citigroup Inc.’s Enterprise Payments business since 2010. In this role, he developed innovative digital payments services for Citi’s institutional and government clients, enabling them to expand into growth markets and helping them to meet their consumers’ current and future needs for secure mobile payments and commerce.