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 re-imagining 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 The SilverLogic taking both the top Visa prize and top Money20/20 grand prize with their solution, OmniPark. 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. The SilverLogic team leveraged Visa Direct and Visa Offers Platform APIs to build their application, OmniPark and created an innovative demo using augmented reality to showcase their idea.
The SilverLogic team won the Visa prize package, which was comprised of $20,000, as well as the following prizes (one per winning team member): a iPhone X, a Xbox One X, a Visa payment-enabled Fitbit Ionic smartwatch 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, The SilverLogic team also won an additional $20,000 and an invitation to pitch OmniPark live at the Money20/20 Startup City.
“We are excited to congratulate The SilverLogic who won both the Visa Challenge prize and the Grand Prize at the Money20/20 Hackathon this weekend!”, said Paul Walsh, senior vice president of Platform Strategy & Innovation at Visa. “Tackling the Visa challenge of re-imagining the smart city of tomorrow that is cashless, The SilverLogic pitched a way it could quickly integrate Visa APIs via the Visa Developer Platform into their urban parking solution, OmniPark, to enable secure, seamless payments opportunities for merchants and consumers alike. Visa applauds The SilverLogic who has a similar vision of ushering in a new era of digital commerce and driving towards a more cashless tomorrow.”
To learn more about how to build with Visa APIs, please visit developer.visa.com and follow us on Twitter at @VisaDeveloper.