1 CommentMoney20/20, the world’s largest event for payments and financial services innovation, today announced the launch of the ‘Money20/20 Hackathon’ to be held October 31 to November 2, 2014 at the Aria Resort & Casino convention facility in Las Vegas, immediately before the kick-off of 2014’s Money20/20, which will take place November 2-6.
The Money20/20 Hackathon will host hundreds of talented developers, designers and entrepreneurs who will compete in teams of one to five members over a 36-hour period. Each team will be challenged with developing FinTech applications using application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs) and other tools from 10 of the biggest innovators in payments and financial services, including Blockchain.info, Chain.com, MasterCard, Mercury Payment Systems (a Vantiv company), ModoPayments and PayPal.
Ten winning teams will share a total prize pool of $125,000, with five $20,000 and five $5,000 cash prizes provided by Money20/20. The overall winning team will also have the opportunity to present their solution as part of Money20/20’s exclusive Launchpad360, a program that provides companies with a forum to showcase their leading-edge innovation in front of an audience of thousands of investors, media and other ecosystem participants. Last year’s Launchpad360 participants have since raised more than $65 million in venture capital funding.
Money20/20 will provide qualified participants with a $250 stipend to cover travel, lodging and other expenses. Participants can also join a series of other events, including a Halloween party on Friday evening as well as judging and awards ceremonies that conclude the proceedings on Sunday.
Notably this year the event will be sponsored by Blockchain whose API for Bitcoin has been used all across the Internet for bitcoin payments from a wide spectrum of sites and services.
“What’s exciting for Blockchain about participating in Money20/20 is being able to provide the most reputable, complete, reliable and fastest Bitcoin API product suite in the industry, which leading developers and creative minds can use to build software that will change the future of the payments industry,” said Nicolas Cary, chief executive officer of Blockchain.info. “We are already the industry leading provider of APIs for thousands of Enterprise Bitcoin businesses, and we look forward to being that same partner for thousands more to come.”
Chain also hopes to garner some attention from the event as another Bitcoin platform that many have been looking at and using to power a variety of different bitcoin related projects.
“Chain is the leading platform for bitcoin developers, and what better way to showcase how these developers are shaping the world’s financial future than to challenge them to invent it at the world’s most important financial technology event,” said Adam Ludwin, chief executive officer of Chain.com. “We are thrilled to see how developers will re-think everything from payments to financial derivatives using bitcoin, and we will be there to support them every step of the way.”
According to Simran R. Aggarwal, co-founder and president of Money20/20, the Money20/20 Hackathon will provide an ideal platform for third-party developer communities to drive innovation.
“The way people and businesses manage, spend and borrow money is changing, with transactions increasingly only part of more connected everyday activities,” said Aggarwal. “Open and interoperable platforms are enabling integrated innovations such as mobile wallets, seamless authentication and identification, omni-channel and micro-location shopping experiences, data-enriched services, cloud point-of-sale engagement and much more. We are proud to support innovation in payment and financial services as a core part of the Money20/20 experience.”
For more information about the Money20/20 Hackathon and to register or sponsor, visit .
