Shared WiFi app wins PayPal ‘BattleHack’ contest

San Jose, Calif. -- PayPal and Braintree have named named the $100,000 grand prize winner of the 2014 BattleHack Series. At the World Finals, competitors were tasked with building an application that incorporates PayPal, Braintree or Venmo APIs.



The grand prize was awarded to the team from Tel Aviv, with two hackers, Shai Mishali and Pavel Kaminsky.



The winning team created AirHop, a collaborative consumption application for consumers to share carrier or WiFi access.



The app enables a mobile phone with no connectivity to "hop" on to another person's device (running the service) to make a phone call or send a text in exchange for a PayPal-enabled payment.