Hosted at the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrika at UCT, 12 teams made up of students from UCT, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), University of the Western Cape (UWC) and Eduvos took part. All competing not just for a prize, but for the opportunity to work with the Interledger Protocol (ILP) to create open-payment solutions for real-world South African problems.
“Hackathons give students the opportunity to create solutions for challenges that they identify in their lived realities,” says Dr Allan Davids, director of the Financial Innovation Hub. “The teams are made up of students from the Financial Innovation Hub alongside students from UCT and other higher education institutions studying disciplines such as computer science, computer and electrical engineering and statistics. They all work together as a team to develop technological solutions for real problems, each contributing their own learned skillsets into product-based technology. One of the solutions at the 2024 hackathon was so innovative it has been contributed back into the open payments standard. So not only do Hackathons give students an opportunity to extend themselves in new ways, but they also provide the ecosystem with valuable contributions that further the mission and vision of a world where everyone can send a payment as easily as an email.”
Judged by Takunda Chirema and Si-Jia Wu, both former students of the UCT MPhil in fintech, and Raul Ranete and Timea Nagy of the Interledger Foundation, the winner was Team Direla – with their innovative use of the Interledger protocol to enable low-income users and retail partners who don’t wish to use point of sale devices for small transactions, to transact using self-generated QR codes.
“At a Hackathon, we’re bringing together people who identify problems and solve them in a very short space of time,” says Ranete, a software engineer at the Interledger Foundation. “That builds community and courage, facilitates experimentation and encourages collaboration. As a judge, you’re sitting in the front seat of someone’s invented ‘car’. You get to see the way that they process their argument, how they build it, what the data is behind it, and what the code engineering is. You get to see new ideas and be surprised by the fact that something such as the Interledger Protocol and Open Payments could potentially be used in these left-field ways. As they use our software, they also point out to us what their needs and their community's needs are. So, for me, it’s not just about judging, it’s about trying to take conclusions away and building a better piece of software.”
Second was Team Fin Illuminaries – with their USSD-driven use of the Interledger Protocol to provide rural inhabitants with an alternative to ATMs by making digital financial services accessible through local spaza shops. Alongside this solution, the Interledger Wallet can also be used to make payments to small, informal businesses.
“From my perspective, these Hackathons stimulate a lot of interest in the entrepreneurial space, says Wu. “I am involved with the GenesisBloc, a pre-incubator programme, and I’m looking for novelty, some technical expertise, and for students that we can support from an entrepreneurial perspective.”
“Overall, the judging will focus on finding a good relationship between the problem and the solution, a good implementation of open payments for a local problem and on potential impact,” says Nagy, an engineering manager and front-end developer at the Interledger Foundation. “Whilst it might not be market-ready at the end of a Hackathon, the winners can choose to start working towards a marketable product.”
Third in place was Team FlowFi – with their crowdfunding platform for students. Their solution enables storytelling for the funded and the ability to match yourself as a funder with the individual. The use of the Interledger Wallet creates a unique incoming payment URL that tracks payments until the donation total is reached.
“On the Monday commencement of the bootcamp, I’m the first lecturer,” says Davids. “I see the look on their faces when they walk in and start learning about the Interledger Protocol and the possibilities of its use. I see their faces on the Wednesday, when they might be feeling overwhelmed, and I see their faces post the Hackathon, where excitement is the order of the day. Next year we want to make this even bigger, including more higher education organisations and more students from diverse educational backgrounds such as the humanities. We are a fortunate beneficiary of the Interledger Foundation’s Higher Education Grant programme, which enables us to hold events such as this, and I want to encourage all universities to apply for this grant. It gives us, as universities, a great opportunity to provide bursaries and hold events such as these. Six individuals, two in the winning team and four in the team that came third, have bursaries from the Interledger Foundation. I am always super proud of the Hackathon teams. They have, in essence, built an app in a week – with people that they barely know. That’s really an achievement.”
