Miguel Pasadinhas, Information Systems and Computer Engineering MSc student at Técnico, is part of the team that won the Visa Award for Connected Commerce at the European challenge of startups created by university students, organised by Junior Achievement Europe, held in Helsinki, Finland. The Portuguese team stood out among twenty companies from sixteen European countries.

The mobile App developed by the young entrepreneurs – City Check – allows users to play various games while visiting a city. “We get the users’ location to find out which point of interest they are visiting. Then, games related to that point of interest are launch (such as quizzes, puzzles, etc.)”, explains Miguel Pasadinhas. This App will solve a problem that parents are facing nowadays: children unpleasantness. “City Check proposes to solve this problem through contextual games”, explains Miguel. In his opinion this was what led their team to victory.

The team could not be happier with this award: “The most important thing in these challenges is the feedback we get. We feel very happy to have received this award, because this allow us to go to London and visit Visa Innovation Centre”. The team will be “working hard over the summer, preparing the Beta version of City Check, to be launched in December, in Portugal”, says Miguel Pasadinhas.

The student of Information Systems and Computer Engineering is the responsible for developing City Check’s back-end, which “includes developing a code that runs on the servers, APIs drawing and database design. The team is also composed of students from Universidade de Évora and ISCTE.