Thursday Feb 01, 2018

17 - Jessica Moorhouse (Payments Race)

Jessica Moorhouse travelled from Toronto to Las Vegas over one week using only a chip and pin credit card.

It’s October 2017 and I’m at the SIBOS global financial services conference in Toronto. I post something about the conference on Facebook and my friend Jessica Moorhouse comments that she’ll be at the conference tomorrow.

I had just found out that she would be participating in this payments race - think of it as the amazing race for money nerds.

It turned out the race was going to start the next day from the conference that I was already attending.

I was able to get an interview with all 5 contestants in the race, Jessica being the only Canadian.

All 5 racers had to make it from Toronto to Las Vegas in a week, using different methods of payment.

There was bitcoin, gold, contactless ring/apple pay, cash, and Jessica had to use a chip and pin credit card.

Maybe you’re thinking, that’s easy.

You can pay for everything with a chip and pin credit card in North America, right?

That’s what the race is all about.

The organizers didn’t do a trial run from Toronto to Vegas and try all of those methods to see if it was possible.

The race was created to find out if it is possible.

So Jessica and the other contestants headed out into the unknown to see whether it would be a breeze or if they would run into obstacles along the way.

Jessica joined me a few weeks after the race to tell her side of the story.