What is the Mobile Money Hackathon?

GSMA Mobile Money, in conjunction with MTN, Airtel-Tigo and platform provider Mahindra Comviva, will hold a hackathon in Kigali, Rwanda, on 14-15 July. Companies and developers in the financial services industry, including banks, aggregators, payments switches and start-ups, will test and build solutions for harmonised API use cases over the weekend.

The hackathon is the fourth of its kind, building on the success of the Mobile Money Hackathon held twice in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and in Karachi, Pakistan in October 2017. The hackathon series, taking place in Asia, Latin America and Africa over the course of two years, has the purpose of raising awareness, demand and accelerating implementation of the GSMA Mobile Money API.

Why is the event focused on harmonised APIs?

The GSMA have been working with MNOs, vendors and third parties within the mobile money ecosystem to develop harmonised Mobile Money APIs. This is to reduce complexity and fragmentation in this fast-paced industry and to ensure rapid on-boarding of partners and an effective common platform to raise the capabilities of mobile operators, vendors and third parties. Learn more about the GSMA Mobile Money APIs, read highlights from the most recent hackathon in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and in Karachi, Pakistan in 2017.

Date

Saturday 14 – Sunday 15 July 2018

Time

Saturday: 07:45 – 20:00. Dinner will be served from 20:00.
Sunday: 09:00 – 18:00

Please arrive promptly at 07:45 to register prior to the start of the hackathon. Participants will be checked in on arrival. There will be security on hand for the duration of the weekend.

Weekend Schedule

Saturday

07:45 – Participants check in
08:00 – Briefing
08:15 – Breakfast and set-up
09:00 – Presentations from GSMA and partners
10:00 – Coding begins!
13:30 – Lunch
20:00 – Dinner; participants can continue coding afterwards if they wish.

Sunday

08:00 – Breakfast
12:00 – Coding ends; practice presentation session begins
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Participants’ presentations and judging
16:15 – Awards Ceremony
16:45 – World Cup Final closing reception

Venue

Address

Impact Hub Kigali,
34 KN 41 st,
2nd Floor & Rooftop at The Office Building,
Kigali,
Rwanda.

Contact number

+250 (0) 725 633 423

Website

http://impacthub.rw/

Is this an open to all event or by invitation only?

If you are interested in participating, please register your interest here, and GSMA will process your application within 48 hours.

You cannot participate if you have previously participated in a GSMA Mobile Money Hackathon.

What are the team sizes?

Teams of 2-5 people are permitted to participate. Individual participants who register without a team will be allocated into a team by GSMA. Twelve to fifteen teams spanning banks, payment gateways and local tech start-ups will be gathering to compete in this year’s event.

What challenges will we be tackling?

Participants are expected to build products serving specific merchant payment use cases against APIs from two different providers. This will help familiarise the developer community with the GSMA Mobile Money API and show its usefulness.

We are particularly interested in looking at solutions that address one or both of the following:

1. Proximity merchant payments
2. Non-proximity merchant payments

For both scenarios above, there is a need to make the payment process as frictionless as possible to merchants and customers.

We do not want to set too many constraints on how you choose to implement the challenge. However, we will provide some scope guidance at the start of the hackathon that will provide structure to the challenge. Links to relevant information and documentation will be provided at on the day of the event.

Judging

On Sunday 14th July following the main testing event, teams will be given up to three minutes to publicly demonstrate your solution in front of a panel of judges and peers, followed by question and answer session with the judges. The submitted applications should be the original work of the 2 day hackathon.

The judges will evaluate your solution and demonstration according to the following judging criteria, each of which will be scored on a scale of between 1- 5 points:

1. How innovative the solution is;
2. The user experience and design;
3. The extent of API implementation;
4. How well it works;
5. The impact to the ecosystem.

Personal ID

Participants are to bring their own Android smartphone and own laptops with their own integrated development environments so they can cut code/compile and download compiled apps to a phone to test.

Organisers will provide provisioned SIMs with data/airtime. Participants can showcase their final output in any way they see fit (PowerPoint presentations can be used). Proof that the APIs have been used correctly is essential.

Great ideas & a positive attitude!

Will sleeping arrangements be provided?

A small number of sleeping bags and a quiet area will be provided for participants who wish to spend the night and continue hacking. There will security on hand to ensure safety of all participants.

First Prize

Trip for two people to attend the GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain from 25th – 28th February 2019. This is inclusive of exhibition passes, return economy airfare, and hotel accommodation (to include breakfast) for the duration of MWC, to be arranged by GSMA.

Second, Third and Judges Recognition prizes to be confirmed.

Check back on this website for further updates.