Money20/20 Hackathon—Visa Developer Platform champions win big
The payment industry continues to be at the epicenter of innovation around the economic world, and much of it will be showcased at Money20/20 in Las Vegas this week. Over the past two days, developers traveled to the Money20/20 Hackathon, regarded as the world’s premiere FinTech hackathon, to compete for $125,000 in cash prizes. The Visa Developer Platform team was on the ground supporting coders, in the center of all of the action, at this 24-hour, high-intensity programming competition.
Hackathon participants who chose to take on the Visa Challenge were tasked with reimagining the cardholder experience in a smart city of tomorrow that is cashless, and were asked to show how the customer experience in payments would evolve in this setting. They were challenged to build a solution or solutions that could help issuers and merchants provide seamless payment experiences by mashing Visa APIs with third-party APIs, with an emphasis on building solutions through connected devices, mobile applications or other cutting-edge/emerging technologies (e.g., virtual reality).
Out of 95 competing teams, 36 used Visa APIs and submitted to the Visa Challenge, with OmniPark taking both the top Visa prize and top Money 20/20 grand prize. OmniPark enables peers to share parking spots in urban areas with excess supply of residential parking, while allowing merchants to attract customers by sponsoring spots. OmniPark leveraged Visa Direct and Visa Offers Platform APIs to build their application, and created an innovative demo using augmented reality to showcase their idea.
The OmniPark Team won the Visa prize package, which was comprised of $20,000 split evenly among the team members, as well as the following prizes (one per winning team member): an iPhone X, Xbox One X, Fitbit Ionic payment-enabled wearable device and an invitation to Visa’s exclusive VIP Party at the Encore Beach Club, where they will have the opportunity to meet over 300 Visa clients and executives. As the overall Money20/20 Hackathon Winner, OmniPark also won an additional $20,000 and an invitation to pitch live at the Money20/20 Startup City.
As a leader in payment innovation, Visa is a proud supporter of those who have a vision to usher in a new era of commerce. To learn more about how to build with Visa APIs, please visit developer.visa.com and follow us on Twitter at @VisaDeveloper.