Lloyds team win second Digital Wallet Foundry event

Last week I attended the second Digital Wallet Foundry event, on the topic of Identity and Loyalty in digital payments, at Microsoft's Modern Jago workspace in Shoreditch.

It was the first time that I had visited Modern Jago and the space itself is absolutely gorgeous. Set in an old school, many of the original features have been kept and new art installations on the theme added.

The week kicked off with talks from industry insiders including Microsoft evangelist Richard Peers, Rafaele Petruzzo, Director of Business Development & Innovation at Tesco Bank and payment entrepreneur Julian Wilson. Eager teams listened to ideas on micro-payments, gamification and loyalty schemes before getting down to writing their app.

Development commenced on Monday afternoon, with just 4 days to code until the winner was chosen on Friday 19th.

A team from Barclays had won the first Foundry event so everyone was rooting for a small player for the second, but it wasn't to be with a two-man team from Lloyds TSB taking the title. Their presentation was well thought-through and entertaining. They started with a role play of someone buying a mobile phone and outlined the frustrations and barriers to sale of ID and credit rating checks.

Their solution was an app called Verify Me, which hooked into the customer's own Lloyds account to allow them to verify themselves and to take a credit rating. The results could then be passed to a merchant app using a QR code or NFC.

Neat and to the point, Verify Me will be going back to Lloyds for further development. Maybe customers will see it in their banking app shortly?