As part of my MBA program, I recently went through a two-week business accelerator where you take an idea and try transform it into a business. “Try” is the keyword in that sentence as even when this process is guided, it is easier said than done. I came in with an idea centered around a decentralized peer to peer lending network that could leverage blockchain technology, allowing people to essentially lend each other money. However over the course of that program, I found that perhaps that idea isn’t particularly necessary nor is it perhaps that original. I learned that firstly, it is best to stay away from whatever is hot in the tech sphere until you reach a point where that technology is necessary. You maybe shouldn’t start with the technology and ask “how might I be able to use this”. The second and most important thing I learned is you need to find a problem and your idea needs to solve that problem. Once that problem and solution has been identified, that is when you try to take that idea and create a business model around it.

Over the course of the process, my idea shifted dozens of times and in the end, I never arrived at anything worth truly developing. But over those hours I came to think there are still plenty of problems left to be solved in the way we do payments. Firstly, payment cards, the predominant way we pay for things on a day to day basis, were invented before the internet. While there have been ways of trying to make them safer, the fundamental use of a physical card creates problems and even more so online where you may have your credit card information stored in numerous places and databases. There have been several high profile hacks in recent years that show that even if you have your card close, you still aren’t totally safe when that card exists in hundreds of places in the digital space.

Furthermore, living in Denmark, I’ve come to realize that there are several countries that have invested in new financial technology and payment infrastructure that make the brick and mortar payment experience much easier than that of places like the US. While the United States is struggling just to get EMV as the standard, many countries in the EU such as Denmark have already begun issuing cards and card reading technology that allows for just a simple tap of the card instead of swiping or chip insertion. It is very close to instantaneous payment and they also have a payment platform called mobilepay where you scan your phone and the payments are done much like that of apple pay and google wallet. You can also send payments in between people with your phone number so it overlaps in some ways with companies like the cash app or venmo.

Now the US has traditionally had high standards for fraud prevention and I think by and large card companies do their best to keep customers safe. But still, if card companies need to spend so much on fraud prevention, might there be a better way to do payments? Is there a way to give customers more security and a better payment experience? And from the merchant perspective there are even more questions like how can we make it easier to set up a business and interact with their customers? But while those are all important questions to ask, the more important thing is to listen.

So in response I’ve put up a new website to start developing some ideas around this space. While I have some initial thoughts on what I might develop from my first run through in the business accelerator, the point is to go back through the ideation phase with a better understanding of customers. To do that I’ve included two surveys on the website, one for customers and one for merchants, each focusing on different needs and aspects of the payment experience. If you read this and find it a compelling project, please take a few minutes to go through those surveys and give us your ideas about what you think that process should be and what you find most difficult about making payments and managing those finances. By listening to you, I hope that we can create a better and more sustainable product and change.