A developer, a designer and a financial services practitioner walk into a room. Who’s holding the key to the next big idea in digital banking?

None of them. But together they might just produce an idea that could eventually revolutionise the world of financial services.

With this hope, Barclays Rise, in collaboration with the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation, Thomson Reuters, IBM and Cenfri, hosted a 24-hour hackathon in Cape Town to foster ideation and prototyping in the financial services space.

This is the era of branchless banking and mobile money. But not everyone is a player. The aim now is to design relevant and accessible financial services targeting the unbanked and underserved. This event is one way to start the process.

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is a creative problem-solving event, where a number of people collaborate to come up with innovative ideas.Barclays Rise’s 24-hour Financial Inclusion Hackathon brought together developers, creatives and industry experts to jointly develop an idea, which is tested through rapid prototyping. The group was split into teams of 10 who each had seven minutes to pitch their ‘product’ to a panel of experts who then selected a winner. The outcome is not comprehensive problem-solving, but playful and creative ideation.