The organizer of the largest global events for payments and financial services innovation, Money20/20, has announced the return of its Money20/20 Hackathon. This will be its second annual hackathon event, aimed at bringing the world’s best developers together to inspire, create and drive powerful innovation. This event will take place Oct. 24-25 at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and it will be followed by the Money20/20 2015 event Oct. 25-28.
The hackathon attracts industry leaders and various sponsoring companies, offering participating dev teams their shot at a piece of $125,000 in prizes. Using the APIs, SDKs and other tools from various leading innovators in payments and financial services (Blockchain, Feedzai, First Data, MasterCard, Modo, PayPal, Vantiv, Visa and Worldpay), hackers will have just 24 hours to show the judges what they’ve got.
There will be five $20,000 prizes, five $5,000 prizes, as well as extra incentives from sponsors up for grabs. In addition to this, the overall winning team will get to present its solution as part of Money20/20's exclusive Launchpad360 program. This program provides companies with the opportunity to showcase in front of thousands of investors, media representatives and other relevant participants.
In a news release, some of the Money20/20 Hackathon sponsors had this to say:
"Blockchain is very excited to be returning as a sponsor for the second annual Money20/20 Hackathon. Last year's projects were incredible and this event draws some of the top programmers in the world, so we're excited to see how they'll push the envelope forward in 2015."— Nicolas Cary, co-founder, Blockchain
"As part of our ongoing commitment to the developer community, MasterCard is pleased to sponsor the Money20/20 Hackathon in 2015. This represents the second year we have sponsored the event, following a 2014 engagement that featured an extremely successful MasterCard API challenge with numerous high-quality submissions. The winner of our 2014 challenge, entercharge, went on to win another major hackathon shortly after and has since begun to grow its business. Money20/20 provides MasterCard the opportunity for continued collaboration with the developer community and a forum to establish direct connections with participants and other sponsors — which in turn brings invaluable support to the entrepreneurs seeking to innovate in the Fintech space."— Seb Taveau, chief developer evangelist, MasterCard
"Sponsoring the inaugural Money20/20 Hackathon last year was one of the best things that ever happened to us. No, seriously. We brought our whole team, and were blown away by the energy, talent, and awesomeness of the developers who came to jam on our API (amongst others). This event is quickly emerging as the Ultimate World Championship of Hackathons with the biggest prizes, the best sponsors, and the most gonzo coders. Can't wait to see another high-intensity Fintech innovation fest." — Bruce Parker, founder and CEO at Modo
Further event information is available on the Money20/20 website.