“Fingerprint identification is relatively secure and will simplify the payment process so people with different levels of literacy can use it. They will test their prototype by giving deposits to a group of students and scanners to local merchants in Nelamangala, India, and providing the associated knowledge and resources needed to use their mobile money transfer system.”

--Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges

While visiting my childhood friend at Smith College – a prestigious, all women’s college in Northampton – I didn’t expect my path to cross with a winner of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges. Yashna Sureka, a first semester senior from Bangalore, India, majoring in Economics with a concentration in Global Financial Institutions, allowed me the pleasure of speaking with her on the project she co-founded alongside Christine Yee and Darpan Bohara.

How was Paysa started?

Paysa began in an introductory engineering class at Smith College, where I met the co- founders Christine Yee Darpan. The class required us to formulate solutions to various design related challenges that exist in the world: from improving the Smith College campus to solutions to one of the grand challenges identified by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Our team chose to tackle the challenge of "Enabling Merchant Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments”.

How did your respective academics backgrounds come into play to define your research?

Christine and I are both Economics majors, we were primarily focused on issues related to income inequality, financial literacy, and poverty. Darpan is a Computer Science major, she was attracted to the technology aspect of this challenge. Our idea was a result of extensive research on our target market, i.e., individuals living below $2 a day in India, brainstorming, and most importantly, collaboration and passion.

Could you briefly outline your project?

Paysa works towards the goal of reducing poverty and increasing financial mobility. Through partnerships with a bank, a phone service provider and a local college, we are developing fingerprint recognition software that will be integrated with a biometric database to support merchants in Nelamangala, India in accepting non-cash purchases from customers.

We will develop software that links the biometric database to the person’s bank account. We will provide merchants in the area with fingerprint scanning devices so that a customer can use their fingerprint to pay for items purchased from the merchant, instead of using cash. Upon receiving a bill for their chosen items, the merchant will display the total amount and the customer can confirm the amount and make the payment by placing their finger on the scanning device, which will use the software to verify the customer’s identity and thus enable the transaction.

What have been your first steps up to this point? How are you progressing?

We made our first trip to Nelamangala, India in December-January 2015-2016 where we conducted surveys and started establishing partnerships and seeking official permission. We will spend our summer 2016 in Nelemangala, India to take our software development and partnership-building forward. After I graduate in December 2016, I will work on Paysa full time. In addition to making trips to India, we work on our venture throughout our academic semester at Smith College.

How people can get involved?

We would be happy to get people’s feedback – they can fill up our comments/ feedback form through our website.

More specifically, we are looking for assistance with software development for our fingerprint recognition system through programming, and help from individuals and/or organizations who have expertise on fingerprint recognition algorithms.

Follow their venture online:

Our website: www.paysa.info