Building the Next Big Thing

There are over 1.3 million software engineers in the world, including coders, but who are the Top 10 and where they can be found? MasterCard has designed a series of hackathons that will travel the world in search of the very best developers, designers and entrepreneurs to take on the APIs that MasterCard supplies.

Using these APIs, developers will have access to assets, data and products used to empower commerce globally. Participating teams from Sydney to Silicon Valley are tasked with creating the next generation of commerce applications.

“To be a master at something says a lot about that person’s capabilities and their unique talents in a particular field,” says Mario Shiliashki, senior vice president of Open APIs at MasterCard. “Today”, he continues, ”coders, as we define them are the world’s newest master artisans and we feel they need to be properly recognized.”

Winning teams from around the globe will be flown to Silicon Valley to compete in the Grand Finale. The champion will receive $100,000, two weeks on-site at the MasterCard Start Path accelerator in Dublin, six months of mentoring and free payment processing for up to $250,000 in transactions for one year.

The competition kicks off in Sydney, Australia on Feb. 7-8. Additional participating countries are Brazil, Canada, Canada, Israel, Turkey, United States and United Kingdom, among others.

In a company release; Shiliashki stressed that MasterCard is opening up its technology to the world to enable any developer to build the next big thing.