Phase I
Founded in 1999
handpoint was founded in 1999 by three classmates from engineering at the University of Iceland, Davíð Guðjónsson, Magnús Þór Torfason and Þórður Heiðar Þórarinsson. Prior to founding handpoint the founders had setup an internet company in 1997 along with classmates from high school but in year 1999 competition was getting fierce as a result of the dot.com boom and barrier to entry was low. At the same time the founders came across the Palm pilot and the CEO of handpoint travelled to California to a Palm conference and met Jeff Hawkins, the creator of the Palm pilot, to learn more about the technology. In short the founders were fascinated by the device and the future potential of mobile devices and decided to sell their shares in the internet company and setup handpoint on the 21 September 1999.
Merge of the mobile phone and the “handheld device”
handpoint was setup without any specific focus on a particular industry or market segment, only the vision that tomorrow‘s landscape would rely on mobile devices instead of PCs; a vision shared by the handset manufacturer Nokia, at the time as they predicted the merge between the mobile phone and a “handheld device” like the Palm into an all-encompassing communication device they labelled “the Smartphone“. Ironically it was Apple that took that vision to fruition 8 years later when the first real smartphone came out, the iPhone in June 2007.
Waiting for the smartphone
While waiting for the real “smartphones” to arrive to the scene handpoint started doing stock management software for retail on the then available handheld devices running PalmOS and Windows CE operating systems. The first airline solution with magnetic stripe payments (MSR) was launched and implemented at the Finnish airline Finnair in 2004 which turned the focus of the company towards card payments and mobile POS solutions. That same year handpoint was entering the UK market with its solutions when it was announced that on the 1st of January 2005 the United Kingdom would be the first country to move away from the unsecure MSR cards and adopt a new and more secure type of payment solution, namely EMV or Chip&PIN.
The first mobile EMV solution
Eager to bring to market the world’s first mobile EMV solution handpoint got into a project with IBM and a couple of other companies and set off on the task. All players involved optimistically believed the task to be a mere 3-4 months project but it soon became clear that the complexity of EMV was far greater than anticipated and the limitations of the current mobile devices a great hindrance. Nearly two years later the first mobile MSR+EMV POS solution saw its daylight at a leading premier league football club stadium in northern England – running on a device from an innovative company from Bristol that had moulded together an HP iPAQ and a Dione payment terminal.
Phase II
Mobile payments
After all the pain and steep learning curve of implementing complex payment solutions on a mobile device the focus turned towards mobile payments solutions and enabling other companies to deploy their solutions on a mobile device with payments using handpoint technology.
To capture the opportunity the founders decided in 2007 to sell the domestic operation (labelled Handtölvur ehf.), setup an operation in the UK and focus entirely on handpoint mobile payments solutions. To lay the groundwork for future international expansion with a revised business model, handpoint raised $2m in capital in 2009 from the Icelandic VC fund Frumtak, with the backing of handpoint’s chairman, the successful investor and business angel Mr Þórður Magnusson. Subsequently, the founders, David and Thordur, relocated with their families to Cambridge, England to grow the new business from there.
Median acquired
In 2010 handpoint acquired the payment service provider, Median, and re-designed the whole payment solution, end-to-end, using latest encryption technology and security standards to bring to market the first mobile MSR+EMV+NFC payment solution for smartphones and tablets. Today handpoint processes payments for leading airlines, retailers and financial institutions around Europe, securely and reliably on mobile devices, PC’s and online.
With the mobile technology finally in place the founders of handpoint are pursuing the vision they set out with.
