TBD announces hackathon grants to address Africa’s payment system gaps

TBD, a part of Block, announced the launch of the hackathon, held in collaboration with the Africa Bitcoin Conference.

The hackathon is a competition designed to drive innovation, creativity, and technological advancement of payments in Africa using the tbDEXopen-source protocol. The submission period for this hackathon opens July 31 2024 and closes September 15, 2024. The hackathon ends with the Africa Bitcoin Conference on December 9-11 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The TBD Hackathon initiative is aimed at unleashing the potential of African developers and innovators. The competition will bring together the best builders and entrepreneurs to address issues in payment systems across Africa.

Currently, many African countries face challenges such as limited access to banking services, high transaction fees, and inefficient cross-border payments. TBD’s open-source trust protocol, tbDEX, aims to address these problems by connecting users to wallet providers and financial institutions of their choice, surfacing competitive exchange rates and fees.

The organizers explained that developers across Africa will be tasked with developing a payment application that leverages the power of tbDEX.

“Join this hackathon and develop a wallet application integrated with tbDEX. You’ll be provided with a sandbox of example PFIs (Participating Financial Institutions) to test your application’s functionality. Participants will work in teams of up to two people and are expected to build their projects using the tbDEXSDK,” the oganisers stressed.

Further six teams of finalists will be chosen and flown to Nairobi, Kenya to attend the Africa Bitcoin Conference and pitch what they’ve built to a panel of judges. The top three projects will be awarded prizes as follows: first prize: $15,000 in BTC, second prize: $10,000 in BTC and third prize: $5,000 in BTC

Global VP of Developer Relations for TBD, Angie Jones, said: “We encourage developers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from all over Africa to participate,” said. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a passionate newcomer, the TBD Hackathon is the perfect platform to build the next generation of financial tools for the continent.”