MintChip Not Just For Ice Cream Anymore

Royal Canadian Mint challenges software developers to help create innovative new applications for digital payment with their MintChip Challenge. The incentive is payment of over two pounds of pure gold, spread out over seven different prize categories that include Best Micropayment Application, Best P2P (person to person) Application, and three Best Overall Application awards. All popular platforms are fair game, including Android, Blackberry, Apple’s iOS, Microsoft Windows, and browser-based applications.

Participants receive two microSD MintChip cards as well as access to two remote MintChip accounts and a software development kit. Only the first 500 approved applicants will be eligible for the contest, so enter today if you want in.

On its surface, this might appear to be a challenger to the bitcoin e-currency, but reality is much different. Bitcoin is decentralized in nature and designed to allow anonymous transactions. MintChip’s website and videos talk about anonymity, but only in the context of purchaser and supplier. This is probably the least important part of the privacy equation, because you’re likely to give the supplier your delivery address anyway. Royal Canadian Mint talks about utilizing a central issuer who collects your personal information (as a requirement for receiving a MintChip card).

Ultimately, the project is probably more analogous to Google Wallet, providing a means to make relatively secure digital payments that tie back to a traditional form of national currency. As a government-sponsored attempt to encourage new software development, it might just produce a few creative new tools. If the goal is a wholesale replacement of cash, I think it has fundamental flaws.