CashYou – Easy on your Wallet
Daniel Chan 陳冠熊 (BSc 2012)
Imagine that you go to lunch and everyone splits the bill.
You think you may have enough small change but after rounds of fumbling in your wallet, all you find is a few HK$100 bills. So, what do you do?
Instead of borrowing money from friends (and forgetting to repay them), Food & Nutritional Science graduate Daniel Chan came up with a solution – an e-wallet.
After winning the competition “Startup Weekend” in April, Chan quit his previous job and began building his app “CashYou” full time, with two part-time partners.
“We want to build an e-wallet for everyone so that they can transfer small payments instantaneously to friends in Hong Kong,” said Chan.
“Right now PayPal is available, or perhaps, people use other e-banking systems to transfer money between individuals. However, there is a high transaction fee.”
Chan’s goal is to eliminate all charges in the virtual world, including settlements across banks. His team is currently negotiating
with various banks in Hong Kong to set up a direct connection with people’s saving accounts.
He expects to test this app on Apple smartphones and Androids at various universities and high schools later this year.
According to the 25 year-old, there is looming competition as Hong Kong’s Octopus card is also plotting a similar plan.
“It’s risky to quit a stable, wellpaid job for the uncertain,” said Chan. “There is always pressure, especially peer pressure. Some of my friends thought I was crazy to have left my job.”
However, the entrepreneur said something braved him into all the risk taking. He credits this to family support and the satisfaction of creating and launching his own “baby”.
“I love building something out of nothing,” said Chan. “The satisfaction you receive is very different when you are building your own dreams.”
Top 20 selected for the Empowering Young Entrepreneurs Program
www.cashyou.hk