The Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, in collaboration with Visa, the global leader in payments, as part of its efforts to educate and enable Nigerians to reduce their reliance on cash, has announced the launch of the Cashless Lagos
Hackathon.
The Cashless Lagos Hackathon, a three-day event, is scheduled to hold from September 14 to 16, 2018, and is aimed at digitizing payments for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. The event will be delivered by Passion Incubator.
The hackathon is open to software developers, programmers, coders, data specialists and designers, who have the capacity to create lasting technology based financial solutions for MSMEs who are beneficiaries of LSETF.
The Country Manager, Visa West Africa, Kemi Okusanya, said, “This partnership is part of our strategy to help merchants become more financially responsible. What makes this hackathon unique is that it encourages Nigerians to develop locally relevant solutions, tailored for their specific environment and needs. We are always looking to support innovative programmes that can better equip individuals to manage their money more effectively, and these solutions will achieve
that.”
Kemi added: “Six teams will present their ideas to the judging panel constituted of representatives from a cross section of business and payments experts drawn from the public and private sectors. Three finalists will be selected based on impact, design, innovation, and customer validation and the winning teams will receive N2million , N1million and N500,000 grants respectively to be used for the development of the solutions, courtesy of Visa.”
The Executive Secretary LSETF, Akintunde Oyebode, while commenting on the partnership, said; “We are pleased to have Visa on board with us for the second edition of our Hackathon. Lagos State is the economic capital of Nigeria and the home of Africa’s leading startups. Our partnership with Visa puts us in a unique position to help uncover, support and apply emerging technologies to some of the biggest transaction challenges faced by entrepreneurs. We are excited by the possibility of leveraging technology, especially digital channels to improve our current cash-based
economy”.
Akintunde further stated that, participants can accesslagosinnovates.ng/hackathon for details on the hackathon and have until 11 September 2018 to submit their applications. Selected applicants, according to him, will meet with the MSMEs on the first day of the hackathon to understand their pain points before the commencement of the hackathon.
Through the hackathon, participants are required to come up with solutions that would allow the business owners to receive payments, make bulk purchases and keep inventory of their transactions, thereby allowing access to bank loans and government grants.
