The winners of the “emphasis” Open Innovation scheme received awards by Cardlink and the ACEin Center of the Athens University of Economics and Business

Press Release
29 January 2020

The winners of the “emphasis” Open Innovation scheme received awards by Cardlink and the ACEin Center of the Athens University of Economics and Business

On Wednesday the 22nd of January, the final of the Open Innovation scheme “emphasis” took place at the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. “Emphasis” is a Cardlink initiative which is performed in collaboration with the Athens Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation of the Athens University of Economics and Business. The scheme’s goal is for new business ideas and innovative products and services to emerge, which can be developed and implemented in a real environment.

For a whole year, a joint team of Cardlink employees and staff of the Athens University of Economics and Business worked rigorously to meet the needs of the competition, which featured a total of thirty-two applications. Participants were asked to submit their business proposals in one of the four thematic sections in the retail industry: Business Analytics, Customer Experience, Payments/Added Value Services and Retail Modernization. The best five ideas that stood out reached the final; from bus alerts to virtual retail stores, storefronts monitoring the customers’ gaze, e-shops for small businesses and a cloud-based POS solution. Following a combined vote of the committee and the audience that attended the event, the first prize was awarded to Vitrina Box, an online platform providing virtual tours of businesses, the second one to the Enneas group, a platform for the creation of chatboxes as an alternative sales channel for any business, and the third one was awarded to Πάμε Στάση (Pame Stasi), an application providing alerts so that no-one misses their bus, along with other services.

About Cardlink

Cardlink was founded in 2004 and is the largest Network Service Provider in Greece with more than 250.000 terminals, 8.500 e-commerce shops and 400 million transactions per year. Cardlink serves businesses in their daily transactions with quality, security and speed.  Cardlink’s team monitors the developments in the field of electronic payments, adopts the latest technologies and creates innovative products and services, which continually improve transactional experience in physical and electronic commerce. Since January 2015, Cardlink is a Quest Group company.

As part of the overall strategy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) has established the Athens Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACEin), the University incubator. The main strategy of the ACEin Center is to support start-ups that operate in areas such as e-commerce, information and communication technologies, social entrepreneurship, etc. The ACEin Center offers training to these companies on how to create and operate a startup, services from experts in areas such as accounting, tax and legal issues, etc., guidance and networking.

Athens Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACEin) AUEB
E-mail: acein@aueb.gr
Tel. 210 8203827
www.acein.aueb.gr