The Money2020 Hackathon, which started as a competition in a single city four years ago, has turned into a multi-country event that takes place four times each year all around the globe. With events in China, Singapore, The Netherlands, and the United States, Money2020 has turned into "one of the best hackathons on the planet for the world's brightest developers, designers, and entrepreneurs." Even Forbes Magazine covered the event. This year, they challenged hackathon participants to design a "simpler, fairer, faster, and more inclusive financial system for business and society as a whole." They were looking for developers to focus on anything from the Internet of Things, machine learning, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.
There were 74 teams participating, 33 of them utilizing Envestnet | Yodlee APIs. Participants for this year’s event were competing for $100,000 in cash prizes. They wanted competitors to use APIs, SDKs, and other tools from financial technology providers and sponsors like Envestnet | Yodlee, PayPal, and Synchrony to develop their solutions. Envestnet | Yodlee had additional prizes available for those utilizing the Platform APIs. Each team spoke to a captive audience of thought leaders, experts, and executives in the fintech and financial services world, as well as hundreds of investors and mainstream media. Developers from across the globe were challenged to design solutions for a simpler, fairer, and more inclusive financial system for businesses and society as a whole.
The winner of this year's hackathon was a Visa team, ViSync. They created an app that improved and simplified the remittance process; helping migrant workers to send money back to their home country, with setting controls on how the money is spent by the recipient. The team used Visa Direct and Visa Transaction Controls APIs to complete their work. We were pleased to see other teams working on credit building apps, like Sherry Shih of Taiwan who used APIs from Envestnet | Yodlee and Synchrony to help people who normally use cash (which doesn't help build credit) to scan cash receipts as a way to build their credit score.
Catherine Rhee and James Hoard were developing a similar app that helped people build a credit score by paying rent and utility bills. When they weren't developing, attendees could attend different talks, keynotes, and breakout sessions to bolster their knowledge, network, and learn about the industry's latest issues. If you'd like to learn more about using Envestnet | Yodlee's APIs in your own fintech development, or to learn more about how we can help you in your own hackathon, please visit our developer's website at https://developer.yodlee.com.
