Wonder: Our Experience with the Citi Mobile Challenge

At Wonder, we're trying to reinvent the gift card and democratize distribution for merchants of all types and sizes. We've developed the first closed-loop eGifting platform that links stored value to existing credit cards, allowing consumers to discover and purchase e-gift cards at virtually any store in the US and redeem automatically when they pay. Merchants get new customers and can strengthen their customer relationships while consumers get choice, convenience and instant gratification.

As a newcomer in the financial services industry, we decided to enter the Citi Mobile Challenge in the U.S. because we saw a lot of value in partnering with a bank. Trust and access to financial transaction data is at the very heart of our proposition. As a respected financial institution, we felt Citi could help us address these issues and also help us bring our innovation to a mass audience.

Our experience entering the Challenge was smooth and seamless. Deciding what to demo was also pretty straightforward! Several of our customers had told us that they'd like to redeem reward points towards gift cards at their favorite businesses. Our challenge was therefore to link Citi's rewards point systems with the Wonder app.

In the run up to Demo Day, we were paired with a Citi developer whose input, support and expertise helped us to link the Wonder app to Citi APIs in just a couple of weeks. Our App was already live and available in the App store, so adding on Citi's reward points component was simple. The one-to-one dialogues with our Citi developer really helped us understand the Citi program and its intricacies so we could work efficiently. We drew on Citi's expertise but they also wanted to pick our brains about the gifting space as well.

The Demo Day itself was really fun and engaging. It was great to meet others in the FinTech start up community, and really gratifying for us to see the crowd reaction when everyone realized how easy it was to use the Wonder gift card app to buy a gift card to a small, artsy boutique in their NYC neighborhood while we were all standing together in Silicon Valley!

We were extremely honored to have been selected as one of the Challenge award recipients. In terms of how the Mobile Challenge has helped us, association with the Citi brand name has helped lend credibility to our business and raise the overall visibility of the company. In FinTech, you're dealing with money which means that trust is all important. The Citi name has helped us when speaking to merchants and gives consumers confidence when using the app.

For more information on the Citi Mobile Challenge, please visit CitiMobileChallenge.com