Maciej Stępień
Braintri payment systems Jiffee:
“Cards are dead. It’s time for Jiffee.” That was the simple message Maciej Stępień and Wojciech Zatorski had for participants of Finovate in New York. Their demo stunned the audience. “Afterwards, people came up to us saying that during previous shows they’d been sitting there reading or checking mail on their phones. Our show forced them to listen,” says Wojciech Zatorski. Braintri got the most votes for the Best of Show Award.
In a way, it’s obvious: up until now, payments have had limitations. For example, some terminals accepted only Android Pay. Older terminals didn’t accept contactless payments. Jiffee eliminates all those barriers. It turns any device into a payment terminal, enabling payments with every phone operating system. It also permits consolidating payments, loyalty programs and other services like Paypal. And it’s contactless – a user needs just two to four inches between the phone and the terminal to complete a transaction. Just a few taps on the phone and customers are on their way.
“Jiffee is patent-pending technology based on Bluetooth. It makes it possible to use old POS terminals and electronic cash registers with the Jiffee Bluetooth Adapter. 90% of existing smartphones are compatible with Jiffee – the technology can be embedded in any app. You can even use old phones to pay, just as you can skip Apple Pay in iPhones,” explains Wojciech Zatorski, COO at Braintri. And Jiffee is cheaper than cards: the costs involved should be no more than 10% of the costs of previous systems. Just imagine, instead of buying a new terminal (approximately $400) you buy a Jiffee dongle for just $20. During their Finovate show, Stępień and Zatorski used such a dongle to turn an old gumball machine into a terminal and made it accept payment. They can do it with any device with Bluetooth. No wonder people pricked up their ears to listen.
Mobile payments never were so easy. Stępień and Zatorski have come up with an end-to-end solution for the whole payment industry, and it’s no surprise. Both Braintri founders have 20 years’ experience in banking technologies, mobile apps, and big data solutions. For over a decade, Maciej Stępień worked for Accenture, and Wojciech Zatorski for one of the world’s biggest investment funds. They then created their own companies, working for the finance industry. Together they created BLIK, the Polish national mobile payment scheme, used today by 70% of the country’s banking population – over 20 million people. Finally, in 2013, they founded Braintri.
And then came Jiffee. “The solution was created as a by-product of a project we were working on in Brazil,” says Zatorski. “Our client wanted us to develop a technology that would allow migration from credit cards to mobile payments. So we tried ultrasound, NFC and Bluetooth, and Bluetooth seemed to be the most promising technology. Based on our previous experience, we realized that it was a technology worth developing further”.
But “releasing sellers and customers”, as Braintri’s founders call the solution, is not the only thing you can do with Jiffee. “After our demo during Finovate, many people came to us with ideas we’d never imagined,” Zatorski points out. “Now we have many promising contacts and ideas to develop. We hope to explore these new possibilities as soon as we’re back in Poland”. The doors to the American market seem to be opening up.
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