Singapore Snags MasterCard’s Masters Of Code Big Prize

MasterCard’s Masters of Code Global Hackathon champ has officially been crowned.

MasterCard announced yesterday (Dec. 9) the winner of its inaugural competition that occurred on Dec. 5-6 in San Francisco against all the winners of the other 12 regional events during 2015. The grand champ title officially went to MoneyRemaid, who earned the title for its software platform that disrupts how domestic workers in Southeast Asia receive and manage salaries.

MoneyRemaid’s team, which was represented by five members, was given the $100,000 grand prize in seed funding, along with incubation in the MasterCard StartPath program, six months of executive mentoring and free payment processing for up to $250,000 in transactions for the first 12 months using Simplify Commerce.

“The ultimate goal of the Masters of Code hackathon series was to find and engage with the very best developers from across the globe who are going to power the next generation of commerce applications,” said Sebastien Taveau, Chief Developer Evangelist, MasterCard Open API. “We have been amazed by the level of talent and the quality of innovations we’ve seen throughout the series and are proud to crown MoneyRemaid as the first champions of Masters of Code.”

MoneyRemaid’s goal, as presented through their demonstration, is to drive financial literacy and financial inclusions in Malaysia, where the company is based. Its target demographic is 300,000 migrant domestic workers that lack financial access, or face high remittance costs when sending money home to families abroad. Using the MasterCard Simplify Commerce and MoneySend APIs, MoneyRemain was able to develop a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to automate the salary and payments process, aggregate remittances to lower their costs, and increase safe investment opportunities with improved interest rates for the workers.

“When we came up with the idea for MoneyRemaid, we were inspired by MasterCard’s commitment to financial inclusion,” said Daniel Lim Fung Hsing, leader of the MoneyRemaid team. “We share the same vision and wanted to create a service that promotes financial literacy and improves the inclusion standing of underprivileged and underbanked workers in our region.”

MasterCard’s Masters of Code competition included 12 cities around the globe, hosting regional weekend-long events that brought together more than 3,000 of the world’s top developers, designers and entrepreneurs to take on the APIs supplied by MasterCard. Using these APIs, developers had access to unsurpassed assets, data and products from MasterCard focused on driving the next generation of commerce solutions.