Hugo Sallé de Chou (EDHEC 2014) and Pumpkin for the EDHEC Entrepreneur of the Year award

Candidate for the EDHEC Entrepreneur of the Year award 

Pumpkin is an application for instantaneous reimbursements between private users. It is free and 100% secure. The IBAN, bank advisers and the 48-hour verification period are a thing of the past! Users manually create an account or log in via Facebook Connect, they register their payment card and can then send or request money to or from anyone using their phone number. On Pumpkin, people don’t just exchange money, they share an enjoyable experience. We wanted to add a social dimension to these transactions, particularly through the use of likes and comments. Pumpkin now has more than 450,000 active users, with a little over 3 million transactions carried out since it was created and around €10 million exchanged every month. The Pumpkin team works out of Lille and Paris and is steadily expanding: it currently includes around 40 employees.

The idea for the application was first scribbled on the corner of a page in 2013. Constantin and I, both students on the EDHEC MSc in Entrepreneurship at the time and affected by the problems associated with everyday reimbursements, set about developing Pumpkin. Our objective was to transform payments and transactions into something fun and informal to get rid of all the frustration generated by monetary exchanges between private individuals.

Hugo's background:

2007 – 2011: Law degree from Paris II Panthéon Assas // Erasmus year in Prague at the Charles University Law Faculty

2011 – 2012: Masters 1 at EDHEC in Lille

2012 – 2013: Gap year internship with Dailymotion Paris / San Francisco

2013 – 2014: MSc in Entrepreneurship at EDHEC in Lille and beginnings of the Pumpkin project. Support from the EYE incubator

To find out more: https://pumpkin-app.co/