Imperial Innovations, the tech transfer unit of Imperial College London, has co-founded a smartphone app developer firm called Yoyo.
The firm is launching with £250k ($380k) in backing from Innovations, which is seeking to bring in additional external investment to bring the total funding to over $1.2m.
The app, which marries consumer loyalty programmes with mobile payments, was developed by Innovations’ entrepreneur in residence Alain Falys, and co-developed with a team of senior-level entrepreneurs at Visa, PayPal, and Barclaycard.
Yoyo is targeting high volume, low value transactions market, ideal for food and drink retail. Combined payments in the sector by both cash and card amount to over £2bn annually, according to the UK Payment Council.
Yoyo will launch this autumn when the new academic year begins at Imperial College London, with over 30 retail outlets serving 20,000 students and staff will accept Yoyo payment.
Russ Cummings, CEO of Innovations, said: “This is a very good example of how our flexible approach of attracting entrepreneurial management such as Alain and his team – and supporting them as they develop innovative approaches – can result in the formation of an exciting young company leveraging the university relationship. This is a management-led, market-pull solution with significant end user benefit and a very large potential customer base. Innovations is committed to helping encourage the entrepreneurial culture in UK universities.”
