Impressive forces in the Central and Eastern Europe financial industry ecosystem joined hands to participate and support the regional Eurovision fintech innovation competition Open Banking Hackathon – Online CEE Edition, which took place last week between 29th of September to 3rd of October 2021.
After a thorough selection process, the competition kicked off on the 29th of September with the best 15 teams having the mission to develop, in only 5 days, a new innovative fintech application to prove a use case of leveraging connection to banking data that is now available based on Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in European countries.
The 5 teams that got it to the final gala to showcase their ideas were: Formaps (Romania), Elucidate AI (Cyprus), ProxiCash (Romania), Dry Cash (Bulgaria), Loany.io (Romania). After a tough deliberation, the jury, formed of 12 C-level representatives of big tech companies and regional banking institutions decided to award the winners:
BIG WINNER Prize (5,000 € cash) – ProxiCash (Romania) – A fintech startup to encourage banking penetration in rural areas, by addressing the users’ main concern, lack of access to cash. Their unique approach would allow people to withdraw funds from their bank accounts from any of the more than 30.000 proximity stores throughout the countryside.
Finqware Special Prize (PoC partnership) – Dry Cash (Bulgaria) – A fintech solution simplify work processes for accountants in order to amplify business. This would be done through using open banking to automate banks statement processes for accountants.