#HackMojaloop

In 2019, HiPipo hosted its first-ever hackathon, #HackMojaloop, facilitated by Sam Kummary, Lewis Daly, Dr. Warren Carew, and John Mark Ssebunnya. The hackathon aimed to empower women with technological productive assets, knowledge, and skills benchmarking on Mojaloop Foundation’s OSS Mojaloop, a blueprint implementation of the Level One Project.

#HackMojaloop engaged FinTechs, startups, women innovators, DFSPs, and stakeholders (including regulators and development partners) to drive financial inclusion. The event allowed FinTechs to access and test a partly functional Mojaloop testing toolkit prototype, experiment with how to build and test innovative digital products and evaluate the benefits and applicability of other open-source tools such as Mojaloop technology.

HiPipo continually emphasizes leadership as a powerful expression of agency and works with women and girls to lead and inspire social change and effectively participate in technology to improve the status of other women and girls as well as themselves. As such, HiPipo organized the first-ever Women in FinTech Hackathon in 2020, a platform to work with women to develop products and solutions that help and improve the lives of their fellow women and men.

The #HackMojaloop hackathon embodied HiPipo’s views and belief that we should develop once and integrate for many using open APIs and interoperability technology. It brought together FinTechs and developers with innovative ideas to create new, compelling interoperable financial applications and products using published OPEN APIs, GSMA APIs, and Level One Project and Mojaloop Technology. The hackathon challenged FinTechs and developers to create new business models, applications, and products that are interoperable among all players, including mobile money operators, banks, and microfinance institutions.

The hackathon targeted to deliver interoperable business models and products in six thematic areas:

  1. Interoperable Merchant and Bill payments
  2. Interoperable CashIn/CashOut and Transfers
  3. Interoperable Remittances and Bulk Payments
  4. Interoperable Consumer/Merchant Saving, Lending, and Insurance
  5. Interoperability with Mojaloop
  6. Interoperable Digital Finance to empower Women in informal cross-border trade

The main objective of the hackathon was to generate high-value actionable business ideas and product concepts. But the hackathon also boosted the innovation culture and further established idea-sharing, effective collaboration, and creativeness driven by enthusiasm towards a shared goal among women innovators, developers, and women-led FinTechs.