[Hackathon Mini Series] — Real Time Payments with QR Code

Our latest blog in our hackathon series looks at the second team based in India who built a tool for taking real time payments with QR codes. Manohar takes us through their experiences!

In the month of October, I participated in my very first hackathon event — “Hack to the Future”, which was organised by Vodafone UK with a theme named, “Create the future”.

The first announcement was made with an introduction to the theme, event details and an amazing poster. The ask was to sign-up and submit some ground-breaking ideas (if any) that would inspire business to move forward, bring innovation with emerging technologies and the folks were encouraged to call out ideas or projects that they wanted to see happen. One of the best parts was that the participation was not restricted to just engineering, all the roles were welcomed. The more the merrier. ‘Diverse teams are always more productive and perform better with greater synergy, enhanced flexibility and better engagement’.

After the first announcement, I was really inspired with the event name, “Hack To The Future”. After giving some thought it occurred to me, why not pitch an idea which has been doing rounds in my mind for a long time i.e., “Real Time Payments with QR (Quick Response) Code”.

The reason for choosing the topic was this, while working on the Vodafone Engineering’s VOXI project, I found that there were only 2 payment modes currently available i.e., payments using Credit/Debit card and PayPal.
Later, it crossed my mind, why not develop a payment system with QR code? This is a system where a QR Code will be generated for a particular subscription or plan, and then the user will simply scan the QR code with any e-wallet app such as Google Pay, Amazon Pay or any other e-wallets. There we go, in a matter of seconds money gets transferred from the user’s account to the merchant’s account.

Introducing such a payment system will not only benefit the customers but also Vodafone. Credit and debit card transactions go through a bank settlement process and can take up to 72 hours to clear and settle. Real-Time payments using QR Code, can be used to free up that ‘float’ (i.e. the interval between when money leaves a payer’s account and is available in the receiver’s account). Also, there is no need for the customer to add their card details which would save the effort as well as time.

“Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.” — Lawrence Bossidy

We were a total of 14 teams from 2 countries (UK and India) participating with creative a mindset filled with abundance of enthusiasm. My team (Bullet Pay) consisted of 5 developers along with 1 team lead. Here is the list of my amazing teammates - Backend Developers — Atul Byale (Team Lead), Prashant Jangam, and Sachitanand Parida and Frontend Developers — Shivani Sisode and Mohana Vighnesh.

Day 1️

The day started with everyone wearing a lovely “Hack to the Future” t-shirt and a pleasant smile with a hint of nervous excitement on their faces. All our team members were enthusiastic and diligently prepared for the hackathon. Since we all were from different teams and locations we first had a formal introduction session.

We began with a pre-event kick-off at 9:30 AM BST, where we met the UK teams virtually amidst a plethora of cheers and applause.

Having a magnificent working area, we started with a meeting to gather all the REQUIREMENTS for our problem statement. Team members made most of the opportunity by laying a roadmap to the final product. Segregating the development processes of the frontend team from the backend team helped us to sync our goals properly. Having the project idea set, and a clear roadmap to follow, team began ANALYZING how each member could contribute to the final product. Our plan was to complete the UI designs and APIs on Day 1 and remaining integration and presentation tasks on Day 2.

The first challenge was UI, we didn’t have a UX designer in our team, hence our front-end developers finalised a design and similarly backend developers started creating all the required APIs for further implementation.

It was not a quick implementation to integrate and specifically required a merchant business account to gather all the information related to transaction details from UPI (Unified Payment Interface). Since we didn’t have any official business, we were unable to create a business account for UPI.

Later that day, the team came up with an alternative, to create a mock system which will provide all the details regarding real time transactions as and when a transaction is initiated. The lead, however, insisted on keeping things real by further integrating a work around to fetch the transaction details from the customer’s cell phone once the transaction successful SMS (Short Message Service) is received. In our mock system, the user (one who will scan the QR Code) and the receiver (one who will receive the scanned QR amount) were supposed to be connected on the same network (Note: In real world the user and the receiver will be connected to their independent network). This would prove that a real transaction indeed took place. On top of that, it was a relief that the backend developers managed to create the API to generate the QR code on Day 1.

The hackathon was planned for a span of 2 days, and the time was running like a river, no replay, no rewind, and we were just left with 1 more day.

Day 2

We’d built the foundations on Day 1, the UI was almost ready but still cosmetic changes were pending. We figured out all the use cases and quickly completed the UI first, now both UI and APIs were ready, and it was time to merge all our changes and put everything together, but we hadn’t completed all the features we had set out to build. It was an indecisive situation to focus on work or presentation. To boost brain function, we had some pizzas loaded with cheese along with cold-drinks and pastries. We successfully integrated our application and started end-to-end testing where we came across the scenario that the QR code was taking time to load which took us to a boiling point. After all the bells and whistles, we were successfully able to run our project, and everything was set.

Now, it was the time to experience the biggest climax of this work motion picture. i.e. “The Presentation”.

The presentations began at 1:30pm BST, with each team getting 7 minutes to pitch their idea and demonstrate their product in front of judges and audience. I along with my teammate Sachitanand, got the opportunity to present the live demonstration which turned into a solid demo. Our product was received well with 13% of votes based on the Audience Vote Poll (which was the 4th highest!). Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top 3 but we received a lot of appreciation and amazing feedback. My favourite one — ‘Don’t think I’ve actually ever seen something like this before, Am I living under a rock?’

Presentation video :

“Failure is Success in progress!” — Albert Einstein

Future Implementation

QR-based payments are the preferred mode of making digital payments as these are easy to generate, deploy, share and use (through scanning). As QRs are extremely low-cost solutions and asset lite, their proliferation is also very high. There is more to it, with Vodafone adopting QR payment as one of the payment solutions, we would also be able to eliminate the need for multiple cards and add those details. As an extension, introducing a Vodafone wallet with autopay/one-tap pay would make plans & subscription recharge, order placement, checkout (involving transactions) even more convenient and faster. Wallet can also be utilised as payment method with rewards/offers by other vendors/apps.

And as per these Global News/Announcement, looks like QR code/UPI integration as a payment method for VF will be seamless in near future:

UPI users will soon conduct transactions in the UK.
NPCI partnered with PayXpert for digital payment in UK.
David Armstrong (Managing Director at PayXpert, UK), said the foray of UPI and RuPay will open a new field of opportunity for the company in the UK. It will further strengthen the capability of company’s solution for UK merchants, he said.

“Everything is a learning experience.” — Angus T. Jones

At first, I was intimidated by the fact that the event was planned only for 2 days but turns out it was one of the best things that had happened which involved a lot of running around, collaborating, and learning from each other. It was an amazing experience, and we set off the fire alarm only once during the 10 hours of intense coding. Every-time I went through a blog/article about how much one achieves in a hackathon within a day or two, I was always sceptical about it because it always seemed impossible until I was part of one. As a team, we never thought of achieving so much in such a brief time.

Here are few points for you if you are wondering ‘Why you should participate in a hackathon?’

Provides opportunity to network — Meet People, collaborate.
A Great way to showcase and improve your skills
Teaches you how to work as a team and perform under pressure.
An amazing place to learn, teach, challenge, test, and share everything! Ideas, technologies and methodologies.
Boosts self-confidence
Let’s be creative and bring innovation — use the latest technologies, learn new programming languages and, especially, take risks! Discover Something!!

And there are many more!

The hackathon resulted in new products, features, and solutions, and at the end of the day, we left the premises with a sense of satisfaction, achievement & our eyes gazing at the horizon waiting eagerly for our next hackathon challenge.

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