Paydiant

01The full story

Chris Gardner describes Paydiant as a mobile payments company built around QR code payments, before that approach became familiar in China and Korea. The team built its own QR reader and pursued large retailers, signing Best Buy and Walmart so their technology could sit inside existing retailer apps. That gave Paydiant distribution without first persuading millions of consumers to change payment habits. The tradeoff was a long enterprise implementation path: the company underestimated the effort required from retail IT teams and the replacement cycle of payment terminals. Gardner says Paydiant was acquired by PayPal while doing about $10 million in revenue, but it never became a widely deployed consumer payment network. The case is a useful warning for infrastructure founders: a signed enterprise logo validates the problem and the buyer, while repeatable deployment is a separate product and operating challenge.