Hurray to our hack-a-thon team which came, saw and conquered at a Fin-Tech Party held by Arion bank last weekend the 3rd and 4th of June.
This event was the first Fin-Tech Party hosted by Arion and centered on developing financial products to solve real-world problems using data from the bank. The aim of Arion bank is to increase the variety and diversity of apps and web services available and expand their digital financial cervices for enhanced customer convenience.
The competition was a great success with 11 teams consisting of about 30 programmers and designers working to develop fully functional apps. The teams had 30 hours to come up with financial software solutions for the future, starting on Friday afternoon and finishing Saturday evening,
Our team, which called themselves “Quantity Theory”, was made up of IIIM specialists, Dr. Jacky Mallett, CADIA’s Jordi Bieger and IIIM employee Magnús Pálsson.
The team created their own crypto-currency—the Freyja —and set up an interface that showed how a bank could use a crypto-currency to do near instantaneous transfers from anywhere in the world to a customer in Iceland. The goal of their project was to allow for Arion’s account holders as well as for tourists to complete transactions in Icelandic currency (ISK) with minimal fees.
To complement the crypto-currency, Jordi wrote a phone app that grants the customer access their account and allows them to monitor activity. This way, customers could see the crypto-currency appear when it was transferred and could then instantaneously convert that to ISK. The app would also show the location of Arion ATMs and local companies that would provide cash (and potentially give a discount if both they and the customer had an account with Arion) enabling the withdrawal of funds without the wait.
As a prize, each member of Quantity Theory received a plane ticket to San Francisco to celebrate their victory in sunny California. We congratulate Quantum Theory on their success!
Here you can read Arion’s news piece about the hack-a-thon.