Electronic payments company Ixaris wants to champion the creation of payment applications with the launch of its Secret Path developer contest. Launched at the Web 2.0 Summit last week in San Francisco, the competition targets developers building payment applications on the Ixaris Opn platform for social media networks, mobile devices, or e-commerce sites.
Compatible with the Visa, MasterCard, and SWIFT networks, the company is offering a total of $10,000 in cash prizes and the first 50 developers to participate will receive $100 transferable around the world in small amounts using their applications.
Ixaris says it has hidden 100 virtual "treasure chests" around the globe. Should an exchange of money take place between the coordinates that transect the point where a treasure is buried, both the sender and the receiver win from $10 to $500.
"If a treasure chest is buried between New York City and Shanghai and an exchange of money takes place on Facebook between those two coordinates, the treasure will be shared between the sender and the receiver of the money," according to Ixaris.
The technology behind Ixaris Opn's mashable payments services is designed to allow developers to build payment apps and profit from embedding these applications into websites. The company says that developers can customize, combine, and link to re-usable payment components called "Paylets" in order to create fully branded payment applications.