Build the Galaxy's Best Payment Application for Space Tourism

Solve The Space Ticket Payment Continuum With Rapyd Virtual Accounts

An innovative space-exploration venture is selling tickets for a flight to the stars. The price is $250,000 per seat. The high price tag makes accepting credit cards and wire transfers expensive for the business and a hassle for the customer. This rocket company needs a solution to payments that’s as novel as their solution for space flight before their sales can take off.  

How to Solve the Continuum

Rapyd’s Virtual Accounts API enables customers of a business to pay by bank transfer to a virtual account number that is local to the customer. Virtual accounts are bank accounts that have no physical existence, can be temporary, and transact on behalf of a real, physical account (like the Rapyd Wallet). A virtual account has a unique account (In Europe, IBAN) number that makes it easy to trace and reconcile the funds coming through from your customer and helps to identify the source or the payer.

Mission: Build a Payments Application For the Galaxy’s Next Big Space Tourism Company

Create an application that accepts payments from customers that want to buy a $150,000 ticket to go to space. 

Use Case Thought Starters: 

a) The space tourism company wants to accept Euros with a European IBAN number that it provides to European customers even though the Space Tourism company is based in the US. 

b) The space tourism company wants to accept Singaporean Dollars with a Singapore Virtual Account Number (VAN) that it provides to its Singaporean customers even though the Space Tourism company is based in the U.S.

c) The space tourism company wants to consume all of Rapyd’s VAN capabilities so it can accept local bank transfers from it’s customers around the world.

Why Credit Cards are not a good option? Credit card fees are cost prohibitive for the space travel company. Interchange fees eat up a large portion of the payment amount.  Most consumer credit cards don’t have $100K+ limit and in many markets around the globe credit cards are not the preferred option. 

Why not use Wire Transfers? Wire transfers are expensive, can create reconciliation issues, and create hassle for the sender as most banks will require extra due diligence for a cross-border transfer (and maybe for the large amount being sent?). 

To solve the Space Ticket Payment Continuum applications must do the following:

• Use Rapyd’s Virtual Accounts API

• Accept multiple local bank payments in customer’s local currency

• Be a Two-Step Payment Process: 1) Make a Deposit 2) Pay the Remaining Amount before lift-off

• Show how the transaction can easily be reconciled in your application

Bonuses

• Demonstrate a clever and frictionless way to do a refund of the deposit amount Hint: Create a Payout after Accepting VA Payment 

• Demonstrate how your application could facilitate other space transport scenarios that are B2B

• A great UX that would make a space exploration company proud

$143,000 in prizes

• Quality of Idea
  (includes creativity and originality)
• Potential Value
  (includes the extent to how valuable the solution is)
• Implementation
  (includes how well the idea was executed by the developers and the code quality)