Insights From Fintech Cadence’s Hackathon
Written by: Tripti Kumar, Engineer Manager, TribalScale
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Hackathon challenges are a lot like sailing: sometimes you’ll be facing a strong headwind and the wind will pick up and you’ll feel like you’re going nowhere. Other times, the wind will be at your back and you’ll sail on through with ease. The difference between those two scenarios is resilience: the ability to bounce back from adversity and keep moving forward.
Recently our team had the chance to compete in Fintech Cadence’s 2022 Fintech Challenge—a fintech hackathon. Our team quickly jumped at this opportunity and although we faced some hard moments, we were able to stay resilient as a team and win second place in 2 out of 3 of the challenges.
The Hackathon Details
The hackathon was a 1 week competition from Oct 21st - 29th, 2022. This year, we were given three challenges related to following themes:
- ☂️Insurance — Presented by by one of Quebec’s leading insurtechs: Emma
- 💳Payments — Presented by one of Canada’s leading payments stakeholders: Payments Canada
- ⚖️Regulations — Presented by Quebec’s provincial regulator: the AMF
The challenges were presented in an interesting format consisting of the following:
- Kick Off & Workshop
- Meeting the Mandators
- Challenge Q & A
- Presentations
Meeting the Mandators was quite helpful as it was an open discussion about the industry standards, challenges and methodologies. It helped the TribalScale team in getting insight on the industry and allowed us to think along the same wavelength in formulating solutions.
The Payments Canada Challenge
Our team thought the Payments Canada challenge was the most interesting of the three. We’ll review the problem statement and our solution that won us second place.
Problem — How can we use Payments Canada’s API portal to develop a solution that will solve real-world payment inefficiencies for Canadians and businesses alike?
The Solution
Team Structure
Our first approach was to define roles (like Product Manager, UI Designer, Presenter, Solution Architect, Engineers) in our team to avoid confusion and delegate responsibility evenly.
For Product Management, we had Matthew Gouldburn as a part of our team. Quoting his experience:
“As a new member of the Tribe, the Fintech Cadence Hackathon was a great way for me to get to know the team and see how TribalScale gets things done. With the open scope and limited timelines of the hackathon, it was very impressive to see the team’s thought leadership, organization, and execution all on display.”
The other team members included: Sadiq Oyapero (Solution Architect), Joyceline Nathaniel (UI Designer), Yug Patel (Presenter), Alvin Fong (Sr. Engineering Manager), Myself (Engineering Manager), Daniel Carmo (Sr. Engineer), Kelly Pham (Engineer), Seerat Parmar (Engineer), Sandipan Halder (Sales), Gunit Raj Waghrey (PM).
Proposition
We solved this problem by creating a unique system that allowed us to create a platform which could be easily integrated in the current system.
Using Payments Canada developer APIs: Request for Payment API, Payment API and Validation API, we proposed forming an E-Wallet Platform. The E-Wallet would include both business wallet and client wallet and the biggest benefit would be ease of use and minimal transaction time. The owner could deposit/withdraw money from their wallet after linking through their bank account. Once the wallet had money, sending/ receiving transactions would be much quicker as we do not need to validate the bank account for each transaction. This system can be made more secure by adding 2FA later.
This system could be implemented in many platforms like Employee Payroll/Automated Billing, Overall Financial Outlook, Automated Billing and Refund, Smart Inventory System, Smart Account Management, etc. It could be easily adapted by large corporations such as Costco, Walmart, RBC, TD, CIBC and many more.
Voila! We were able to form a well-rounded and much-appreciated solution.
Quoting our Solution Architect Sadiq Oyapero’s thoughts,
“I was excited to be a part of the Fintech challenge when I found out that Payments Canada would be one of the mandators. It was an opportunity to get insights on the progress made thus far. More importantly, participating in the challenge afforded me the opportunity to work with a team to propose solutions to the current payment challenges in Canada.”
Final Thoughts
In general, after having worked with the likes of CIBC, RBC, Manulife and Borrowell to help them stand out from the competition, our team sees a huge opportunity in the world of fintech. We’re seeing more brands take on a customer-first approach in the struggle to grow engagement in highly saturated markets, both by leveraging customer data and insights, and by connecting with consumers in hyper-personalized ways. This hackathon was a great way for our team to put their fintech expertise to the test and we’re excited to take on similar opportunities in the coming new year.
Tripti is a curious techie and a philomath, working at TribalScale as an Agile Software Engineer. A big fan of “How I can” rather than an “If I can” mindset. She spends her time caring for plants and pets, doing yoga and meditation, and volunteering for Isha Foundation.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
