Rentalic CEO Wins PayPal Innovation Award at DEMO 2010 Conference

PALM DESERT, Calif.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Rentalic, Inc., whose innovative web platform promotes sharing and re-use of goods and services through person to person renting, announced that its Founder & CEO, Punsri Abeywickrema, captured the first place award in the PayPal X Developer Challenge with his design of a new cutting-edge rental transaction process.

“concept, further validates that Rentalic has an enormous opportunity to guide social commerce in a direction that is beneficial to people, as well as the environment”

The competition challenged developers to solve the fundamental problems people face when attempting to pay or get paid in business transactions. Contestants were required to build their payment solutions using the PayPal X application programming interfaces (APIs) to create the most innovative payment application for businesses in areas such as services, social media, gaming, and mobile and consumer electronics.

Top 10 finalists were first determined by popular vote of PayPal members. Then a panel of distinguished judges, which included Pierre Omidyar (Chairman of eBay), Scott Thompson (President of PayPal), Marc Andreessen (General Partner of Andreessen/Horowitz), and Roelof Botha (Partner at Sequoia Capital), selected Abeywickrema's innovative design as the top winner.

Abeywickrema proudly accepted the award today at the DEMO Spring 2010 Conference in Palm Desert. "I am very excited to win this award. Knowing that both the community of PayPal users and a panel of highly respected executives in Silicon Valley believe in the potential of the "Rent, Share, Be Green" concept, further validates that Rentalic has an enormous opportunity to guide social commerce in a direction that is beneficial to people, as well as the environment," said Abeywickrema.

Rentalic had been faced with the challenge of determining what prevents online renting and re-use from becoming a widespread practice in our society. Focused discussion with its Web site users, as well as the general public, revealed that transaction security was a major deterrent to many would-be renters. To combat the problem, Abeywickrema designed the company’s unique rental transaction process, which is currently under review by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a patent.

This new process introduces a unique secret security code that the borrower must provide to the owner to verify that he/she is the person who reserved the rental goods. The security code provides protection for both the borrower (by allowing the borrower to first inspect the item before providing the code to authorize payment) and the owner (by proving that the person receiving his item is the authorized borrower). A great convenience is that the security code can be validated instantly with a mobile phone during the meeting of the owner and borrower - even from a remote location without access to a computer. After validation of the secret code, the payment is released instantly, and the owner is given the OK to hand over the goods to the borrower.

Several fans of the start-up firm have referred to Rentalic as the “ground zero of social commerce”. Staying true to its Silicon Valley roots, the company continues to use technology to promote re-use and sharing through renting, creating both financial benefits for its users and a benefit to the environment.

About Rentalic:

Rentalic, Inc. is a privately held company based in San Mateo, California. The company provides an innovative web platform that enables person-to-person renting among friends, family, and communities. Rentalic’s mission is to help people save money, make money, and save the environment by encouraging reuse and sharing through person-to-person renting. The company’s vision is to ultimately use its business model to build economically and environmentally sustainable communities. To learn more about Rentalic, visit www.rentalic.com.